bacon by r.w. church dean of st. paul's honorary fellow of oriel college english men of letters. edited by john morley. johnson leslie stephen. gibbon j.c. morison. scott r.h. hutton. shelley j.a. symonds. hume t.h. huxley. goldsmith william black. defoe william minto. burns j.c. shairp. spenser r.w. church. thackeray anthony trollope. burke john morley. milton mark pattison. hawthorne henry james, jr. southey e. dowden. chaucer a.w. ward. bunyan j.a. froude. cowper goldwin smith. pope leslie stephen. byron john nichol. locke thomas fowler. wordsworth f. myers. dryden g. saintsbury. landor sidney colvin. de quincey david masson. lamb alfred ainger. bentley r.c. jebb. dickens a.w. ward. gray e.w. gosse. swift leslie stephen. sterne h.d. traill. macaulay j. cotter morison. fielding austin dobson. sheridan mrs. oliphant addison w.j. courthope. bacon r.w. church. coleridge h.d. traill. sir philip sidney j.a. symonds. keats sidney colvin. mo, cloth, cents per volume. _other volumes in preparation._ * * * * * published by harper & brothers, new york. _any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the united states or canada, on receipt of the price._ preface. in preparing this sketch it is needless to say how deeply i am indebted to mr. spedding and mr. ellis, the last editors of bacon's writings, the very able and painstaking commentators, the one on bacon's life, the other on his philosophy. it is impossible to overstate the affectionate care and high intelligence and honesty with which mr. spedding has brought together and arranged the materials for an estimate of bacon's character. in the result, in spite of the force and ingenuity of much of his pleading, i find myself most reluctantly obliged to differ from him; it seems to me to be a case where the french saying, cited by bacon in one of his commonplace books, holds good--"_par trop se débattre, la vérité se perd_."[ ] but this does not diminish the debt of gratitude which all who are interested about bacon must owe to mr. spedding. i wish also to acknowledge the assistance which i have received from mr. gardiner's _history of england_ and mr. fowler's edition of the _novum organum_; and not least from m. de rémusat's work on bacon, which seems to me the most complete and the most just estimate both of bacon's character and work which has yet appeared; though even in this clear and dispassionate survey we are reminded by some misconceptions, strange in m. de rémusat, how what one nation takes for granted is incomprehensible to its neighbour; and what a gap there is still, even in matters of philosophy and literature, between the whole continent and ourselves-- "penitus toto divisos orbe britannos." footnotes: [ ] _promus_: edited by mrs. h. pott, p. . contents. chapter i. page early life chapter ii. bacon and elizabeth chapter iii. bacon and james i. chapter iv. bacon solicitor-general chapter v. bacon attorney-general and chancellor chapter vi. bacon's fall chapter vii. bacon's last years-- - chapter viii. bacon's philosophy chapter ix. bacon as a writer bacon. chapter i. early life. the life of francis bacon is one which it is a pain to write or to read. it is the life of a man endowed with as rare a combination of noble gifts as ever was bestowed on a human intellect; the life of one with whom the whole purpose of living and of every day's work was to do great things to enlighten and elevate his race, to enrich it with new powers, to lay up in store for all ages to come a source of blessings which should never fail or dry up; it was the life of a man who had high thoughts of the ends and methods of law and government, and with whom the general and public good was regarded as the standard by which the use of public power was to be measured; the life of a man who had struggled hard and successfully for the material prosperity and opulence which makes work easy and gives a man room and force for carrying out his purposes. all his life long his first and never-sleeping passion was the romantic and splendid ambition after knowledge, for the conquest of nature and for the service of man; gathering up in himself the spirit and longings and efforts of all discoverers and inventors of the arts, as they are symbolised in the mythical prometheus. he rose to the highest place and honour; and yet that place and honour were but the fringe and adornment of all that made him great. it is difficult to imagine a grander and more magnificent career; and his name ranks among the few chosen examples of human achievement. and yet it was not only an unhappy life; it was a poor life. we expect that such an overwhelming weight of glory should be borne up by a character corresponding to it in strength and nobleness. but that is not what we find. no one ever had a greater idea of what he was made for, or was fired with a greater desire to devote himself to it. he was all this. and yet being all this, seeing deep into man's worth, his capacities, his greatness, his weakness, his sins, he was not true to what he knew. he cringed to such a man as buckingham. he sold himself to the corrupt and ignominious government of james i. he was willing to be employed to hunt to death a friend like essex, guilty, deeply guilty, to the state, but to bacon the most loving and generous of benefactors. with his eyes open he gave himself up without resistance to a system unworthy of him; he would not see what was evil in it, and chose to call its evil good; and he was its first and most signal victim. bacon has been judged with merciless severity. but he has also been defended by an advocate whose name alone is almost a guarantee for the justness of the cause which he takes up, and the innocency of the client for whom he argues. mr. spedding devoted nearly a lifetime, and all the resources of a fine intellect and an earnest conviction, to make us revere as well as admire bacon. but it is vain. it is vain to fight against the facts of his life: his words, his letters. "men are made up," says a keen observer, "of professions, gifts, and talents; and also of _themselves_."[ ] with all his greatness, his splendid genius, his magnificent ideas, his enthusiasm for truth, his passion to be the benefactor of his kind; with all the charm that made him loved by good and worthy friends, amiable, courteous, patient, delightful as a companion, ready to take any trouble--there was in bacon's "self" a deep and fatal flaw. he was a pleaser of men. there was in him that subtle fault, noted and named both by philosophy and religion in the [greek: areskos] of aristotle, the [greek: anthrôpareskos] of st. paul, which is more common than it is pleasant to think, even in good people, but which if it becomes dominant in a character is ruinous to truth and power. he was one of the men--there are many of them--who are unable to release their imagination from the impression of present and immediate power, face to face with themselves. it seems as if he carried into conduct the leading rule of his philosophy of nature, _parendo vincitur_. in both worlds, moral and physical, he felt himself encompassed by vast forces, irresistible by direct opposition. men whom he wanted to bring round to his purposes were as strange, as refractory, as obstinate, as impenetrable as the phenomena of the natural world. it was no use attacking in front, and by a direct trial of strength, people like elizabeth or cecil or james; he might as well think of forcing some natural power in defiance of natural law. the first word of his teaching about nature is that she must be won by observation of her tendencies and demands; the same radical disposition of temper reveals itself in his dealings with men: they, too, must be won by yielding to them, by adapting himself to their moods and ends; by spying into the drift of their humour, by subtly and pliantly falling in with it, by circuitous and indirect processes, the fruit of vigilance and patient thought. he thought to direct, while submitting apparently to be directed. but he mistook his strength. nature and man are different powers, and under different laws. he chose to please man, and not to follow what his soul must have told him was the better way. he wanted, in his dealings with men, that sincerity on which he insisted so strongly in his dealings with nature and knowledge. and the ruin of a great life was the consequence. francis bacon was born in london on the d of january, / , three years before galileo. he was born at york house, in the strand; the house which, though it belonged to the archbishops of york, had been lately tenanted by lord keepers and lord chancellors, in which bacon himself afterwards lived as lord chancellor, and which passed after his fall into the hands of the duke of buckingham, who has left his mark in the water gate which is now seen, far from the river, in the garden of the thames embankment. his father was sir nicholas bacon, elizabeth's first lord keeper, the fragment of whose effigy in the crypt of st. paul's is one of the few relics of the old cathedral before the fire. his uncle by marriage was that william cecil who was to be lord burghley. his mother, the sister of lady cecil, was one of the daughters of sir antony cook, a person deep in the confidence of the reforming party, who had been tutor of edward vi. she was a remarkable woman, highly accomplished after the fashion of the ladies of her party, and as would become her father's daughter and the austere and laborious family to which she belonged. she was "exquisitely skilled in the greek and latin tongues;" she was passionately religious, according to the uncompromising religion which the exiles had brought back with them from geneva, strasburg, and zurich, and which saw in calvin's theology a solution of all the difficulties, and in his discipline a remedy for all the evils, of mankind. this means that his boyhood from the first was passed among the high places of the world--at one of the greatest crises of english history--in the very centre and focus of its agitations. he was brought up among the chiefs and leaders of the rising religion, in the houses of the greatest and most powerful persons of the state, and naturally, as their child, at times in the court of the queen, who joked with him, and called him "her young lord keeper." it means also that the religious atmosphere in which he was brought up was that of the nascent and aggressive puritanism, which was not satisfied with the compromises of the elizabethan reformation, and which saw in the moral poverty and incapacity of many of its chiefs a proof against the great traditional system of the church which elizabeth was loath to part with, and which, in spite of all its present and inevitable shortcomings, her political sagacity taught her to reverence and trust. at the age of twelve he was sent to cambridge, and put under whitgift at trinity. it is a question which recurs continually to readers about those times and their precocious boys, what boys were then? for whatever was the learning of the universities, these boys took their place with men and consorted with them, sharing such knowledge as men had, and performing exercises and hearing lectures according to the standard of men. grotius at eleven was the pupil and companion of scaliger and the learned band of leyden; at fourteen he was part of the company which went with the ambassadors of the states-general to henry iv.; at sixteen he was called to the bar, he published an out-of-the-way latin writer, martianus capella, with a learned commentary, and he was the correspondent of de thou. when bacon was hardly sixteen he was admitted to the society of "ancients" of gray's inn, and he went in the household of sir amyas paulet, the queen's ambassador, to france. he thus spent two years in france, not in paris alone, but at blois, tours, and poitiers. if this was precocious, there is no indication that it was thought precocious. it only meant that clever and promising boys were earlier associated with men in important business than is customary now. the old and the young heads began to work together sooner. perhaps they felt that there was less time to spare. in spite of instances of longevity, life was shorter for the average of busy men, for the conditions of life were worse. two recollections only have been preserved of his early years. one is that, as he told his chaplain, dr. rawley, late in life, he had discovered, as far back as his cambridge days, the "unfruitfulness" of aristotle's method. it is easy to make too much of this. it is not uncommon for undergraduates to criticise their text-books; it was the fashion with clever men, as, for instance, montaigne, to talk against aristotle without knowing anything about him; it is not uncommon for men who have worked out a great idea to find traces of it, on precarious grounds, in their boyish thinking. still, it is worth noting that bacon himself believed that his fundamental quarrel with aristotle had begun with the first efforts of thought, and that this is the one recollection remaining of his early tendency in speculation. the other is more trustworthy, and exhibits that inventiveness which was characteristic of his mind. he tells us in the _de augmentis_ that when he was in france he occupied himself with devising an improved system of cypher-writing--a thing of daily and indispensable use for rival statesmen and rival intriguers. but the investigation, with its call on the calculating and combining faculties, would also interest him, as an example of the discovery of new powers by the human mind. in the beginning of bacon, at eighteen, was called home by his father's death. this was a great blow to his prospects. his father had not accomplished what he had intended for him, and francis bacon was left with only a younger son's "narrow portion." what was worse, he lost one whose credit would have served him in high places. he entered on life, not as he might have expected, independent and with court favour on his side, but with his very livelihood to gain--a competitor at the bottom of the ladder for patronage and countenance. this great change in his fortunes told very unfavourably on his happiness, his usefulness, and, it must be added, on his character. he accepted it, indeed, manfully, and at once threw himself into the study of the law as the profession by which he was to live. but the law, though it was the only path open to him, was not the one which suited his genius, or his object in life. to the last he worked hard and faithfully, but with doubtful reputation as to his success, and certainly against the grain. and this was not the worst. to make up for the loss of that start in life of which his father's untimely death had deprived him, he became, for almost the rest of his life, the most importunate and most untiring of suitors. in or bacon took up his abode at gray's inn, which for a long time was his home. he went through the various steps of his profession. he began, what he never discontinued, his earnest and humble appeals to his relative the great lord burghley, to employ him in the queen's service, or to put him in some place of independence: through lord burghley's favour he seems to have been pushed on at his inn, where, in , he was a bencher; and in he came into parliament for melcombe regis. he took some small part in parliament; but the only record of his speeches is contained in a surly note of recorder fleetwood, who writes as an old member might do of a young one talking nonsense. he sat again for liverpool in the year of the armada ( ), and his name begins to appear in the proceedings. these early years, we know, were busy ones. in them bacon laid the foundation of his observations and judgments on men and affairs; and in them the great purpose and work of his life was conceived and shaped. but they are more obscure years than might have been expected in the case of a man of bacon's genius and family, and of such eager and unconcealed desire to rise and be at work. no doubt he was often pinched in his means; his health was weak, and he was delicate and fastidious in his care of it. plunged in work, he lived very much as a recluse in his chambers, and was thought to be reserved, and what those who disliked him called arrogant. but bacon was ambitious--ambitious, in the first place, of the queen's notice and favour. he was versatile, brilliant, courtly, besides being his father's son; and considering how rapidly bold and brilliant men were able to push their way and take the queen's favour by storm, it seems strange that bacon should have remained fixedly in the shade. something must have kept him back. burghley was not the man to neglect a useful instrument with such good will to serve him. but all that mr. spedding's industry and profound interest in the subject has brought together throws but an uncertain light on bacon's long disappointment. was it the rooted misgiving of a man of affairs like burghley at that passionate contempt of all existing knowledge, and that undoubting confidence in his own power to make men know, as they never had known, which bacon was even now professing? or was it something soft and over-obsequious in character which made the uncle, who knew well what men he wanted, disinclined to encourage and employ the nephew? was francis not hard enough, not narrow enough, too full of ideas, too much alive to the shakiness of current doctrines and arguments on religion and policy? was he too open to new impressions, made by objections or rival views? or did he show signs of wanting backbone to stand amid difficulties and threatening prospects? did burghley see something in him of the pliability which he could remember as the serviceable quality of his own young days--which suited those days of rapid change, but not days when change was supposed to be over, and when the qualities which were wanted were those which resist and defy it? the only thing that is clear is that burghley, in spite of bacon's continual applications, abstained to the last from advancing his fortunes. whether employed by government or not, bacon began at this time to prepare those carefully-written papers on the public affairs of the day, of which he has left a good many. in our day they would have been pamphlets or magazine articles. in his they were circulated in manuscript, and only occasionally printed. the first of any importance is a letter of advice to the queen, about the year , on the policy to be followed with a view to keeping in check the roman catholic interest at home and abroad. it is calm, sagacious, and, according to the fashion of the age, slightly machiavellian. but the first subject on which bacon exhibited his characteristic qualities, his appreciation of facts, his balance of thought, and his power, when not personally committed, of standing aloof from the ordinary prejudices and assumptions of men round him, was the religious condition and prospects of the english church. bacon had been brought up in a puritan household of the straitest sect. his mother was an earnest, severe, and intolerant calvinist, deep in the interests and cause of her party, bitterly resenting all attempts to keep in order its pretensions. she was a masterful woman, claiming to meddle with her brother-in-law's policy, and though a most affectionate mother she was a woman of violent and ungovernable temper. her letters to her son antony, whom she loved passionately, but whom she suspected of keeping dangerous and papistical company, show us the imperious spirit in which she claimed to interfere with her sons; and they show also that in francis she did not find all the deference which she looked for. recommending antony to frequent "the religious exercises of the sincerer sort," she warns him not to follow his brother's advice or example. antony was advised to use prayer twice a day with his servants. "your brother," she adds, "is too negligent therein." she is anxious about antony's health, and warns him not to fall into his brother's ill-ordered habits: "i verily think your brother's weak stomach to digest hath been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and then musing _nescio quid_ when he should sleep, and then in consequent by late rising and long lying in bed, whereby his men are made slothful and himself continueth sickly. but my sons haste not to hearken to their mother's good counsel in time to prevent." it seems clear that francis bacon had shown his mother that not only in the care of his health, but in his judgment on religious matters, he meant to go his own way. mr. spedding thinks that she must have had much influence on him; it seems more likely that he resented her interference, and that the hard and narrow arrogance which she read into the gospel produced in him a strong reaction. bacon was obsequious to the tyranny of power, but he was never inclined to bow to the tyranny of opinion; and the tyranny of puritan infallibility was the last thing to which he was likely to submit. his mother would have wished him to sit under cartwright and travers. the friend of his choice was the anglican preacher, dr. andrewes, to whom he submitted all his works, and whom he called his "inquisitor general;" and he was proud to sign himself the pupil of whitgift, and to write for him--the archbishop of whom lady bacon wrote to her son antony, veiling the dangerous sentiment in greek, "that he was the ruin of the church, for he loved his own glory more than christ's." certainly, in the remarkable paper on _controversies in the church_ ( ), bacon had ceased to feel or to speak as a puritan. the paper is an attempt to compose the controversy by pointing out the mistakes in judgment, in temper, and in method on both sides. it is entirely unlike what a puritan would have written: it is too moderate, too tolerant, too neutral, though like most essays of conciliation it is open to the rejoinder from both sides--certainly from the puritan--that it begs the question by assuming the unimportance of the matters about which each contended with so much zeal. it is the confirmation, but also the complement, and in some ways the correction of hooker's contemporary view of the quarrel which was threatening the life of the english church, and not even hooker could be so comprehensive and so fair. for hooker had to defend much that was indefensible: he had to defend a great traditional system, just convulsed by a most tremendous shock--a shock and alteration, as bacon says, "the greatest and most dangerous that can be in a state," in which old clews and habits and rules were confused and all but lost; in which a frightful amount of personal incapacity and worthlessness had, from sheer want of men, risen to the high places of the church; and in which force and violence, sometimes of the most hateful kind, had come to be accepted as ordinary instruments in the government of souls. hooker felt too strongly the unfairness, the folly, the intolerant aggressiveness, the malignity of his opponents--he was too much alive to the wrongs inflicted by them on his own side, and to the incredible absurdity of their arguments--to do justice to what was only too real in the charges and complaints of those opponents. but bacon came from the very heart of the puritan camp. he had seen the inside of puritanism--its best as well as its worst side. he witnesses to the humility, the conscientiousness, the labour, the learning, the hatred of sin and wrong, of many of its preachers. he had heard, and heard with sympathy, all that could be urged against the bishops' administration, and against a system of legal oppression in the name of the church. where religious elements were so confusedly mixed, and where each side had apparently so much to urge on behalf of its claims, he saw the deep mistake of loftily ignoring facts, and of want of patience and forbearance with those who were scandalised at abuses, while the abuses, in some cases monstrous, were tolerated and turned to profit. towards the bishops and their policy, though his language is very respectful, for the government was implicated, he is very severe. they punish and restrain, but they do not themselves mend their ways or supply what was wanting; and theirs are "_injuriæ potentiorum_"--"injuries come from them that have the upperhand." but hooker himself did not put his finger more truly and more surely on the real mischief of the puritan movement: on the immense outbreak in it of unreasonable party spirit and visible personal ambition--"these are the true successors of diotrephes and not my lord bishops"--on the gradual development of the puritan theory till it came at last to claim a supremacy as unquestionable and intolerant as that of the papacy; on the servile affectation of the fashions of geneva and strasburg; on the poverty and foolishness of much of the puritan teaching--its inability to satisfy the great questions which it raised in the soul, its unworthy dealing with scripture--"naked examples, conceited inferences, and forced allusions, which mine into all certainty of religion"--"the word, the bread of life, they toss up and down, they break it not;" on their undervaluing of moral worth, if it did not speak in their phraseology--"as they censure virtuous men by the names of _civil_ and _moral_, so do they censure men truly and godly wise, who see into the vanity of their assertions, by the name of _politiques_, saying that their wisdom is but carnal and savouring of man's brain." bacon saw that the puritans were aiming at a tyranny which, if they established it, would be more comprehensive, more searching, and more cruel than that of the older systems; but he thought it a remote and improbable danger, and that they might safely be tolerated for the work they did in education and preaching, "because the work of exhortation doth chiefly rest upon these men, and they have a zeal and hate of sin." but he ends by warning them lest "that be true which one of their adversaries said, _that they have but two small wants--knowledge and love_." one complaint that he makes of them is a curious instance of the changes of feeling, or at least of language, on moral subjects. he accuses them of "having pronounced generally, and without difference, all untruths unlawful," forgetful of the egyptian midwives, and rahab, and solomon, and even of him "who, the more to touch the hearts of the disciples with a holy dalliance, made as though he would have passed emmaus." he is thinking of their failure to apply a principle which was characteristic of his mode of thought, that even a statement about a virtue like veracity "hath limit as all things else have;" but it is odd to find bacon bringing against the puritans the converse of the charge which his age, and pascal afterwards, brought against the jesuits. the essay, besides being a picture of the times as regards religion, is an example of what was to be bacon's characteristic strength and weakness: his strength in lifting up a subject which had been degraded by mean and wrangling disputations, into a higher and larger light, and bringing to bear on it great principles and the results of the best human wisdom and experience, expressed in weighty and pregnant maxims; his weakness in forgetting, as, in spite of his philosophy, he so often did, that the grandest major premises need well-proved and ascertained minors, and that the enunciation of a principle is not the same thing as the application of it. doubtless there is truth in his closing words; but each party would have made the comment that what he had to prove, and had not proved, was that by following his counsel they would "love the whole world better than a part." "let them not fear ... the fond calumny of _neutrality_; but let them know that is true which is said by a wise man, _that neuters in contentions are either better or worse than either side_. these things have i in all sincerity and simplicity set down touching the controversies which now trouble the church of england; and that without all art and insinuation, and therefore not like to be grateful to either part. notwithstanding, i trust what has been said shall find a correspondence in their minds which are not embarked in partiality, and which _love the whole letter than a part_" up to this time, though bacon had showed himself capable of taking a broad and calm view of questions which it was the fashion among good men, and men who were in possession of the popular ear, to treat with narrowness and heat, there was nothing to disclose his deeper thoughts--nothing foreshadowed the purpose which was to fill his life. he had, indeed, at the age of twenty-five, written a "youthful" philosophical essay, to which he gave the pompous title "_temporis partus maximus_," "the greatest birth of time." but he was thirty-one when we first find an indication of the great idea and the great projects which were to make his name famous. this indication is contained in an earnest appeal to lord burghley for some help which should not be illusory. its words are distinct and far-reaching, and they are the first words from him which tell us what was in his heart. the letter has the interest to us of the first announcement of a promise which, to ordinary minds, must have appeared visionary and extravagant, but which was so splendidly fulfilled; the first distant sight of that sea of knowledge which henceforth was opened to mankind, but on which no man, as he thought, had yet entered. it contains the famous avowal--"_i have taken all knowledge to be my province_"--made in the confidence born of long and silent meditations and questionings, but made in a simple good faith which is as far as possible from vain boastfulness. "my lord,--with as much confidence as mine own honest and faithful devotion unto your service and your honourable correspondence unto me and my poor estate can breed in a man, do i commend myself unto your lordship. i wax now somewhat ancient: one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour glass. my health, i thank god, i find confirmed; and i do not fear that action shall impair it, because i account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. i ever bare a mind (in some middle place that i could discharge) to serve her majesty, not as a man born under sol, that loveth honour, nor under jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly), but as a man born under an excellent sovereign that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities. besides, i do not find in myself so much self-love, but that the greater parts of my thoughts are to deserve well (if i be able) of my friends, and namely of your lordship; who, being the atlas of this commonwealth, the honour of my house, and the second founder of my poor estate, i am tied by all duties, both of a good patriot, and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever i am to do you service. again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though i cannot accuse myself that i am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. lastly, i confess that i have as vast contemplative ends as i have moderate civil ends; for i have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if i could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, i hope i should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that province. this, whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) _philanthropia_, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. and i do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own; which is the thing i greatly affect. and for your lordship, perhaps you shall not find more strength and less encounter in any other. and if your lordship shall find now, or at any time, that i do seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your lordship shall be concurrent, say then that i am a most dishonest man. and if your lordship will not carry me on, i will not do as anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto voluntary poverty, but this i will do--i will sell the inheritance i have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (he said) lay so deep. this which i have writ unto your lordship is rather thoughts than words, being set down without all art, disguising, or reservation. wherein i have done honour both to your lordship's wisdom, in judging that that will be best believed of your lordship which is truest, and to your lordship's good nature, in retaining nothing from you. and even so i wish your lordship all happiness, and to myself means and occasions to be added to my faithful desire to do you service. from my lodgings at gray's inn." this letter to his unsympathetic and suspicious, but probably not unfriendly relative, is the key to bacon's plan of life; which, with numberless changes of form, he followed to the end. that is, a profession, steadily, seriously, and laboriously kept to, in order to provide the means of living; and beyond that, as the ultimate and real end of his life, the pursuit, in a way unattempted before, of all possible human knowledge, and of the methods to improve it and make it sure and fruitful. and so his life was carried out. on the one hand it was a continual and pertinacious seeking after government employment, which could give credit to his name and put money in his pocket--attempts by general behaviour, by professional services when the occasion offered, by putting his original and fertile pen at the service of the government, to win confidence, and to overcome the manifest indisposition of those in power to think that a man who cherished the chimera of universal knowledge could be a useful public servant. on the other hand, all the while, in the crises of his disappointment or triumph, the one great subject lay next his heart, filling him with fire and passion--how really to know, and to teach men to know indeed, and to use their knowledge so as to command nature; the great hope to be the reformer and restorer of knowledge in a more wonderful sense than the world had yet seen in the reformation of learning and religion, and in the spread of civilised order in the great states of the renaissance time. to this he gave his best and deepest thoughts; for this he was for ever accumulating, and for ever rearranging and reshaping those masses of observation and inquiry and invention and mental criticism which were to come in as parts of the great design which he had seen in the visions of his imagination, and of which at last he was only able to leave noble fragments, incomplete after numberless recastings. this was not indeed the only, but it was the predominant and governing, interest of his life. whether as solicitor for court favour or public office; whether drudging at the work of the law or managing state prosecutions; whether writing an opportune pamphlet against spain or father parsons, or inventing a "device" for his inn or for lord essex to give amusement to queen elizabeth; whether fulfilling his duties as member of parliament or rising step by step to the highest places in the council board and the state; whether in the pride of success or under the amazement of unexpected and irreparable overthrow, while it seemed as if he was only measuring his strength against the rival ambitions of the day, in the same spirit and with the same object as his competitors, the true motive of all his eagerness and all his labours was not theirs. he wanted to be powerful, and still more to be rich; but he wanted to be so, because without power and without money he could not follow what was to him the only thing worth following on earth--a real knowledge of the amazing and hitherto almost unknown world in which he had to live. bacon, to us, at least, at this distance, who can only judge him from partial and imperfect knowledge, often seems to fall far short of what a man should be. he was not one of the high-minded and proud searchers after knowledge and truth, like descartes, who were content to accept a frugal independence so that their time and their thoughts might be their own. bacon was a man of the world, and wished to live in and with the world. he threatened sometimes retirement, but never with any very serious intention. in the court was his element, and there were his hopes. often there seems little to distinguish him from the ordinary place-hunters, obsequious and selfish, of every age; little to distinguish him from the servile and insincere flatterers, of whom he himself complains, who crowded the antechambers of the great queen, content to submit with smiling face and thankful words to the insolence of her waywardness and temper, in the hope, more often disappointed than not, of hitting her taste on some lucky occasion, and being rewarded for the accident by a place of gain or honour. bacon's history, as read in his letters, is not an agreeable one; after every allowance made for the fashions of language and the necessities of a suitor, there is too much of insincere profession of disinterestedness, too much of exaggerated profession of admiration and devoted service, too much of disparagement and insinuation against others, for a man who respected himself. he submitted too much to the miserable conditions of rising which he found. but, nevertheless, it must be said that it was for no mean object, for no mere private selfishness or vanity, that he endured all this. he strove hard to be a great man and a rich man. but it was that he might have his hands free and strong and well furnished to carry forward the double task of overthrowing ignorance and building up the new and solid knowledge on which his heart was set--that immense conquest of nature on behalf of man which he believed to be possible, and of which he believed himself to have the key. the letter to lord burghley did not help him much. he received the reversion of a place, the clerkship of the council, which did not become vacant for twenty years. but these years of service declined and place withheld were busy and useful ones. what he was most intent upon, and what occupied his deepest and most serious thought, was unknown to the world round him, and probably not very intelligible to his few intimate friends, such as his brother antony and dr. andrewes. meanwhile he placed his pen at the disposal of the authorities, and though they regarded him more as a man of study than of practice and experience, they were glad to make use of it. his versatile genius found another employment. besides his affluence in topics, he had the liveliest fancy and most active imagination. but that he wanted the sense of poetic fitness and melody, he might almost be supposed, with his reach and play of thought, to have been capable, as is maintained in some eccentric modern theories, of writing shakespeare's plays. no man ever had a more imaginative power of illustration drawn from the most remote and most unlikely analogies; analogies often of the quaintest and most unexpected kind, but often also not only felicitous in application but profound and true. his powers were early called upon for some of those sportive compositions in which that age delighted on occasions of rejoicing or festival. three of his contributions to these "devices" have been preserved--two of them composed in honour of the queen, as "triumphs," offered by lord essex, one probably in and another in ; a third for a gray's inn revel in . the "devices" themselves were of the common type of the time, extravagant, odd, full of awkward allegory and absurd flattery, and running to a prolixity which must make modern lovers of amusement wonder at the patience of those days; but the "discourses" furnished by bacon are full of fine observation and brilliant thought and wit and happy illustration, which, fantastic as the general conception is, raises them far above the level of such fugitive trifles. among the fragmentary papers belonging to this time which have come down, not the least curious are those which throw light on his manner of working. while he was following out the great ideas which were to be the basis of his philosophy, he was as busy and as painstaking in fashioning the instruments by which they were to be expressed; and in these papers we have the records and specimens of this preparation. he was a great collector of sentences, proverbs, quotations, sayings, illustrations, anecdotes, and he seems to have read sometimes simply to gather phrases and apt words. he jots down at random any good and pointed remark which comes into his thought or his memory; at another time he groups a set of stock quotations with a special drift, bearing on some subject, such as the faults of universities or the habits of lawyers. nothing is too minute for his notice. he brings together in great profusion mere forms, varied turns of expression, heads and tails of clauses and paragraphs, transitions, connections; he notes down fashions of compliment, of excuse or repartee, even morning and evening salutations; he records neat and convenient opening and concluding sentences, ways of speaking more adapted than others to give a special colour or direction to what the speaker or writer has to say--all that hook-and-eye work which seems so trivial and passes so unnoticed as a matter of course, and which yet is often hard to reach, and which makes all the difference between tameness and liveliness, between clearness and obscurity--all the difference, not merely to the ease and naturalness, but often to the logical force of speech. these collections it was his way to sift and transcribe again and again, adding as well as omitting. from one of these, belonging to and the following years, the _promus of formularies and elegancies_, mr. spedding has given curious extracts; and the whole collection has been recently edited by mrs. henry pott. thus it was that he prepared himself for what, as we read it, or as his audience heard it, seems the suggestion or recollection of the moment. bacon was always much more careful of the value or aptness of a thought than of its appearing new and original. of all great writers he least minds repeating himself, perhaps in the very same words; so that a simile, an illustration, a quotation pleases him, he returns to it--he is never tired of it; it obviously gives him satisfaction to introduce it again and again. these collections of odds and ends illustrate another point in his literary habits. his was a mind keenly sensitive to all analogies and affinities, impatient of a strict and rigid logical groove, but spreading as it were tentacles on all sides in quest of chance prey, and quickened into a whole system of imagination by the electric quiver imparted by a single word, at once the key and symbol of the thinking it had led to. and so he puts down word or phrase, so enigmatical to us who see it by itself, which to him would wake up a whole train of ideas, as he remembered the occasion of it--how at a certain time and place this word set the whole moving, seemed to breathe new life and shed new light, and has remained the token, meaningless in itself, which reminds him of so much. when we come to read his letters, his speeches, his works, we come continually on the results and proofs of this early labour. some of the most memorable and familiar passages of his writings are to be traced from the storehouses which he filled in these years of preparation. an example of this correspondence between the note-book and the composition is to be seen in a paper belonging to this period, written apparently to form part of a masque, or as he himself calls it, a "conference of pleasure," and entitled the _praise of knowledge_. it is interesting because it is the first draught which we have from him of some of the leading ideas and most characteristic language about the defects and the improvement of knowledge, which were afterwards embodied in the _advancement_ and the _novum organum_. the whole spirit and aim of his great reform is summed up in the following fine passage: "facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to assever, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in a part of nature--these and the like have been the things which have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments.... therefore, no doubt, the _sovereignty of man_ lieth hid in knowledge; wherein many things are reserved which kings with their treasures cannot buy nor with their force command; their spials and intelligencers can give no news of them; their seamen and discoverers cannot sail where they grow. now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity; but if we could be led by her in invention, we should command her in action." to the same occasion as the discourse on the _praise of knowledge_ belongs, also, one in _praise of the queen_. as one is an early specimen of his manner of writing on philosophy, so this is a specimen of what was equally characteristic of him--his political and historical writing. it is, in form, necessarily a panegyric, as high-flown and adulatory as such performances in those days were bound to be. but it is not only flattery. it fixes with true discrimination on the points in elizabeth's character and reign which were really subjects of admiration and homage. thus of her unquailing spirit at the time of the spanish invasion-- "lastly, see a queen, that when her realm was to have been invaded by an army, the preparation whereof was like the travail of an elephant, the provisions infinite, the setting forth whereof was the terror and wonder of europe; it was not seen that her cheer, her fashion, her ordinary manner was anything altered; not a cloud of that storm did appear in that countenance wherein peace doth ever shine; but with excellent assurance and advised security she inspired her council, animated her nobility, redoubled the courage of her people; still having this noble apprehension, not only that she would communicate her fortune with them, but that it was she that would protect them, and not they her; which she testified by no less demonstration than her presence in camp. therefore that magnanimity that neither feareth greatness of alteration, nor the vows of conspirators, nor the power of the enemy, is more than heroical." these papers, though he put his best workmanship into them, as he invariably did with whatever he touched, were of an ornamental kind. but he did more serious work. in the year a pamphlet had been published on the continent in latin and english, _responsio ad edictum reginæ angliæ_, with reference to the severe legislation which followed on the armada, making such charges against the queen and the government as it was natural for the roman catholic party to make, and making them with the utmost virulence and unscrupulousness. it was supposed to be written by the ablest of the roman pamphleteers, father parsons. the government felt it to be a dangerous indictment, and bacon was chosen to write the answer to it. he had additional interest in the matter, for the pamphlet made a special and bitter attack on burghley, as the person mainly responsible for the queen's policy. bacon's reply is long and elaborate, taking up every charge, and reviewing from his own point of view the whole course of the struggle between the queen and the supporters of the roman catholic interest abroad and at home. it cannot be considered an impartial review; besides that it was written to order, no man in england could then write impartially in that quarrel; but it is not more one-sided and uncandid than the pamphlet which it answers, and bacon is able to recriminate with effect, and to show gross credulity and looseness of assertion on the part of the roman catholic advocate. but religion had too much to do with the politics of both sides for either to be able to come into the dispute with clean hands: the roman catholics meant much more than toleration, and the sanguinary punishments of the english law against priests and jesuits were edged by something even keener than the fear of treason. but the paper contains some large surveys of public affairs, which probably no one at that time could write but bacon. bacon never liked to waste anything good which he had written; and much of what he had written in the panegyric in _praise of the queen_ is made use of again, and transferred with little change to the pages of the _observations on a libel_. footnotes: [ ] dr. mozley. chapter ii. bacon and elizabeth. the last decade of the century, and almost of elizabeth's reign ( - ), was an eventful one to bacon's fortunes. in it the vision of his great design disclosed itself more and more to his imagination and hopes, and with more and more irresistible fascination. in it he made his first literary venture, the first edition of his _essays_ ( ), ten in number, the first-fruits of his early and ever watchful observation of men and affairs. these years, too, saw his first steps in public life, the first efforts to bring him into importance, the first great trials and tests of his character. they saw the beginning and they saw the end of his relations with the only friend who, at that time, recognised his genius and his purposes, certainly the only friend who ever pushed his claims; they saw the growth of a friendship which was to have so tragical a close, and they saw the beginnings and causes of a bitter personal rivalry which was to last through life, and which was to be a potent element hereafter in bacon's ruin. the friend was the earl of essex. the competitor was the ablest, and also the most truculent and unscrupulous of english lawyers, edward coke. while bacon, in the shade, had been laying the foundations of his philosophy of nature, and vainly suing for legal or political employment, another man had been steadily rising in the queen's favour and carrying all before him at court--robert devereux, lord essex; and with essex bacon had formed an acquaintance which had ripened into an intimate and affectionate friendship. we commonly think of essex as a vain and insolent favourite, who did ill the greatest work given him to do--the reduction of ireland; who did it ill from some unexplained reason of spite and mischief; and who, when called to account for it, broke out into senseless and idle rebellion. this was the end. but he was not always thus. he began life with great gifts and noble ends; he was a serious, modest, and large-minded student both of books and things, and he turned his studies to full account. he had imagination and love of enterprise, which gave him an insight into bacon's ideas such as none of bacon's contemporaries had. he was a man of simple and earnest religion; he sympathized most with the puritans, because they were serious and because they were hardly used. those who most condemn him acknowledge his nobleness and generosity of nature. bacon in after days, when all was over between them, spoke of him as a man always _patientissimus veri_; "the more plainly and frankly you shall deal with my lord," he writes elsewhere, "not only in disclosing particulars, but in giving him _caveats_ and admonishing him of any error which in this action he may commit (such is his lordship's nature), the better he will take it." "he must have seemed," says mr. spedding, a little too grandly, "in the eyes of bacon like the hope of the world." the two men, certainly, became warmly attached. their friendship came to be one of the closest kind, full of mutual services, and of genuine affection on both sides. it was not the relation of a great patron and useful dependant; it was, what might be expected in the two men, that of affectionate equality. each man was equally capable of seeing what the other was, and saw it. what essex's feelings were towards bacon the results showed. bacon, in after years, repeatedly claimed to have devoted his whole time and labour to essex's service. holding him, he says, to be "the fittest instrument to do good to the state, i applied myself to him in a manner which i think rarely happeneth among men; neglecting the queen's service, mine own fortune, and, in a sort, my vocation, i did nothing but advise and ruminate with myself ... anything that might concern his lordship's honour, fortune, or service." the claim is far too wide. the "queen's service" had hardly as yet come much in bacon's way, and he never neglected it when it did come, nor his own fortune or vocation; his letters remain to attest his care in these respects. but no doubt bacon was then as ready to be of use to essex, the one man who seemed to understand and value him, as essex was desirous to be of use to bacon. and it seemed as if essex would have the ability as well as the wish. essex was, without exception, the most brilliant man who ever appeared at elizabeth's court, and it seemed as if he were going to be the most powerful. leicester was dead. burghley was growing old, and indisposed for the adventures and levity which, with all her grand power of ruling, elizabeth loved. she needed a favourite, and essex was unfortunately marked out for what she wanted. he had leicester's fascination, without his mean and cruel selfishness. he was as generous, as gallant, as quick to descry all great things in art and life, as philip sidney, with more vigour and fitness for active life than sidney. he had not raleigh's sad, dark depths of thought, but he had a daring courage equal to raleigh's, without raleigh's cynical contempt for mercy and honour. he had every personal advantage requisite for a time when intellect, and ready wit, and high-tempered valour, and personal beauty, and skill in affairs, with equal skill in amusements, were expected to go together in the accomplished courtier. and essex was a man not merely to be courted and admired, to shine and dazzle, but to be loved. elizabeth, with her strange and perverse emotional constitution, loved him, if she ever loved any one. every one who served him loved him; and he was, as much as any one could be in those days, a popular favourite. under better fortune he might have risen to a great height of character; in elizabeth's court he was fated to be ruined. for in that court all the qualities in him which needed control received daily stimulus, and his ardour and high-aiming temper turned into impatience and restless irritability. he had a mistress who was at one time in the humour to be treated as a tender woman, at another as an outrageous flirt, at another as the haughtiest and most imperious of queens; her mood varied, no one could tell how, and it was most dangerous to mistake it. it was part of her pleasure to find in her favourite a spirit as high, a humour as contradictory and determined, as her own; it was the charming contrast to the obsequiousness or the prudence of the rest; but no one could be sure at what unlooked-for moment, and how fiercely, she might resent in earnest a display of what she had herself encouraged. essex was ruined for all real greatness by having to suit himself to this bewildering and most unwholesome and degrading waywardness. she taught him to think himself irresistible in opinion and in claims; she amused herself in teaching him how completely he was mistaken. alternately spoiled and crossed, he learned to be exacting, unreasonable, absurd in his pettish resentments or brooding sullenness. he learned to think that she must be dealt with by the same methods which she herself employed. the effect was not produced in a moment; it was the result of a courtiership of sixteen years. but it ended in corrupting a noble nature. essex came to believe that she who cowed others must be frightened herself; that the stinging injustice which led a proud man to expect, only to see how he would behave when refused, deserved to be brought to reason by a counter-buffet as rough as her own insolent caprice. he drifted into discontent, into disaffection, into neglect of duty, into questionable schemings for the future of a reign that must shortly end, into criminal methods of guarding himself, of humbling his rivals and regaining influence. a "fatal impatience," as bacon calls it, gave his rivals an advantage which, perhaps in self-defence, they could not fail to take; and that career, so brilliant, so full of promise of good, ended in misery, in dishonour, in remorse, on the scaffold of the tower. with this attractive and powerful person bacon's fortunes, in the last years of the century, became more and more knit up. bacon was now past thirty, essex a few years younger. in spite of bacon's apparent advantage and interest at court, in spite of abilities, which, though his genius was not yet known, his contemporaries clearly recognised, he was still a struggling and unsuccessful man: ambitious to rise, for no unworthy reasons, but needy, in weak health, with careless and expensive habits, and embarrassed with debt. he had hoped to rise by the favour of the queen and for the sake of his father. for some ill-explained reason he was to the last disappointed. though she used him "for matters of state and revenue," she either did not like him, or did not see in him the servant she wanted to advance. he went on to the last pressing his uncle, lord burghley. he applied in the humblest terms, he made himself useful with his pen, he got his mother to write for him; but lord burghley, probably because he thought his nephew more of a man of letters than a sound lawyer and practical public servant, did not care to bring him forward. from his cousin, robert cecil, bacon received polite words and friendly assurances. cecil may have undervalued him, or have been jealous of him, or suspected him as a friend of essex; he certainly gave bacon good reason to think that his words meant nothing. except essex, and perhaps his brother antony--the most affectionate and devoted of brothers--no one had yet recognised all that bacon was. meanwhile time was passing. the vastness, the difficulties, the attractions of that conquest of all knowledge which he dreamed of, were becoming greater every day to his thoughts. the law, without which he could not live, took up time and brought in little. attendance on the court was expensive, yet indispensable, if he wished for place. his mother was never very friendly, and thought him absurd and extravagant. debts increased and creditors grumbled. the outlook was discouraging, when his friendship with essex opened to him a more hopeful prospect. in the year the attorney-general's place was vacant, and essex, who in that year became a privy councillor, determined that bacon should be attorney-general. bacon's reputation as a lawyer was overshadowed by his philosophical and literary pursuits. he was thought young for the office, and he had not yet served in any subordinate place. and there was another man, who was supposed to carry all english law in his head, full of rude force and endless precedents, hard of heart and voluble of tongue, who also wanted it. an attorney-general was one who would bring all the resources and hidden subtleties of english law to the service of the crown, and use them with thorough-going and unflinching resolution against those whom the crown accused of treason, sedition, or invasion of the prerogative. it is no wonder that the cecils, and the queen herself, thought coke likely to be a more useful public servant than bacon: it is certain what coke himself thought about it, and what his estimate was of the man whom essex was pushing against him. but essex did not take up his friend's cause in the lukewarm fashion in which burghley had patronised his nephew. there was nothing that essex pursued with greater pertinacity. he importuned the queen. he risked without scruple offending her. she apparently long shrank from directly refusing his request. the cecils were for coke--the "_huddler_" as bacon calls him, in a letter to essex; but the appointment was delayed. all through , and until april, , the struggle went on. when robert cecil suggested that essex should be content with the solicitor's place for bacon, "praying him to be well advised, for if his lordship had spoken of that it might have been of easier digestion to the queen," he turned round on cecil-- "digest me no digesting," said the earl; "for the attorneyship is that i must have for francis bacon; and in that i will spend my uttermost credit, friendship, and authority against whomsoever, and that whosoever went about to procure it to others, that it should cost both the mediators and the suitors the setting on before they came by it. and this be you assured of, sir robert," quoth the earl, "for now do i fully declare myself; and for your own part, sir robert, i do think much and strange both of my lord your father and you, that can have the mind to seek the preferment of a stranger before so near a kinsman; namely, considering if you weigh in a balance his parts and sufficiency in any respect with those of his competitor, excepting only four poor years of admittance, which francis bacon hath more than recompensed with the priority of his reading; in all other respects you shall find no comparison between them." but the queen's disgust at some very slight show of independence on bacon's part in parliament, unforgiven in spite of repeated apologies, together with the influence of the cecils and the pressure of so formidable and so useful a man as coke, turned the scale against essex. in april, , coke was made attorney. coke did not forget the pretender to law, as he would think him, who had dared so long to dispute his claims; and bacon was deeply wounded. "no man," he thought, "had ever received a more exquisite disgrace," and he spoke of retiring to cambridge "to spend the rest of his life in his studies and contemplations." but essex was not discouraged. he next pressed eagerly for the solicitorship. again, after much waiting, he was foiled. an inferior man was put over bacon's head. bacon found that essex, who could do most things, for some reason could not do this. he himself, too, had pressed his suit with the greatest importunity on the queen, on burghley, on cecil, on every one who could help him; he reminded the queen how many years ago it was since he first kissed her hand in her service, and ever since had used his wits to please; but it was all in vain. for once he lost patience. he was angry with essex; the queen's anger with essex had, he thought, recoiled on his friend. he was angry with the queen; she held his long waiting cheap; she played with him and amused herself with delay; he would go abroad, and he "knew her majesty's nature, that she neither careth though the whole surname of the bacons travelled, nor of the cecils neither." he was very angry with robert cecil; affecting not to believe them, he tells him stories he has heard of his corrupt and underhand dealing. he writes almost a farewell letter of ceremonious but ambiguous thanks to lord burghley, hoping that he would impute any offence that bacon might have given to the "complexion of a suitor, and a tired sea-sick suitor," and speaking despairingly of his future success in the law. the humiliations of what a suitor has to go through torment him: "it is my luck," he writes to cecil, "still to be akin to such things as i neither like in nature nor would willingly meet with in my course, but yet cannot avoid without show of base timorousness or else of unkind or suspicious strangeness." and to his friend fulke greville he thus unburdens himself: "sir,--i understand of your pains to have visited me, for which i thank you. my matter is an endless question. i assure you i had said _requiesce anima mea_; but i now am otherwise put to my psalter; _nolite confidere_. i dare go no further. her majesty had by set speech more than once assured me of her intention to call me to her service, which i could not understand but of the place i had been named to. and now whether _invidus homo hoc fecit_; or whether my matter must be an appendix to my lord of essex suit; or whether her majesty, pretending to prove my ability, meaneth but to take advantage of some errors which, like enough, at one time or other i may commit; or what is it? but her majesty is not ready to despatch it. and what though the master of the rolls, and my lord of essex, and yourself, and others, think my case without doubt, yet in the meantime i have a hard condition, to stand so that whatsoever service i do to her majesty it shall be thought to be but _servitium viscatum_, lime-twigs and fetches to place myself; and so i shall have envy, not thanks. this is a course to quench all good spirits, and to corrupt every man's nature, which will, i fear, much hurt her majesty's service in the end. i have been like a piece of stuff bespoken in the shop; and if her majesty will not take me, it may be the selling by parcels will be more gainful. for to be, as i told you, like a child following a bird, which when he is nearest flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so _in infinitum_, i am weary of it; as also of wearying my good friends, of whom, nevertheless, i hope in one course or other gratefully to deserve. and so, not forgetting your business, i leave to trouble you with this idle letter; being but _justa et moderata querimonia_; for indeed i do confess, _primus amor_ will not easily be cast off. and thus again i commend me to you." after one more effort the chase was given up, at least for the moment; for it was soon resumed. but just now bacon felt that all the world was against him. he would retire "out of the sunshine into the shade." one friend only encouraged him. he did more. he helped him when bacon most wanted help, in his straitened and embarrassed "estate." essex, when he could do nothing more, gave bacon an estate worth at least £ . bacon's resolution is recorded in the following letter: "it may please your good lordship,--i pray god her majesty's weighing be not like the weight of a balance, _gravia deorsum levia sursum_. but i am as far from being altered in devotion towards her, as i am from distrust that she will be altered in opinion towards me, when she knoweth me better. for myself, i have lost some opinion, some time, and some means; this is my account; but then for opinion, it is a blast that goeth and cometh; for time, it is true it goeth and cometh not; but yet i have learned that it may be redeemed. for means, i value that most; and the rather, _because i am purposed not to follow the practice of the law_ (_if her majesty command me in any particular, i shall be ready to do her willing service_); and my reason is only, _because it drinketh too much time, which i have dedicated to better purposes_. but even for that point of estate and means, i partly lean to thales' opinion, that a philosopher may be rich if he will. thus your lordship seeth how i comfort myself; to the increase whereof i would fain please myself to believe that to be true which my lord treasurer writeth; which is, that it is more than a philosopher morally can disgest. but without any such high conceit, i esteem it like the pulling out of an aching tooth, which, i remember, when i was a child, and had little philosophy, i was glad of when it was done. for your lordship, i do think myself more beholding to you than to any man. and i say, i reckon myself as a _common_ (not popular but _common_); and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, so much your lordship shall be sure to have.--your lordship's to obey your honourable commands, more settled than ever." it may be that, as bacon afterwards maintained, the closing sentences of this letter implied a significant reserve of his devotion. but during the brilliant and stormy years of essex's career which followed, bacon's relations to him continued unaltered. essex pressed bacon's claims whenever a chance offered. he did his best to get bacon a rich wife--the young widow of sir christopher hatton--but in vain. instead of bacon she accepted coke, and became famous afterwards in the great family quarrel, in which coke and bacon again found themselves face to face, and which nearly ruined bacon before the time. bacon worked for essex when he was wanted, and gave the advice which a shrewd and cautious friend would give to a man who, by his success and increasing pride and self-confidence, was running into serious dangers, arming against himself deadly foes, and exposing himself to the chances of fortune. bacon was nervous about essex's capacity for war, a capacity which perhaps was not proved, even by the most brilliant exploit of the time, the capture of cadiz, in which essex foreshadowed the heroic but well-calculated audacities of nelson and cochrane, and showed himself as little able as they to bear the intoxication of success, and to work in concert with envious and unfriendly associates. at the end of the year , the year in which essex had won such reputation at cadiz, bacon wrote him a letter of advice and remonstrance. it is a lively picture of the defects and dangers of essex's behaviour as the queen's favourite; and it is a most characteristic and worldly-wise summary of the ways which bacon would have him take, to cure the one and escape the other. bacon had, as he says, "good reason to think that the earl's fortune comprehended his own." and the letter may perhaps be taken as an indirect warning to essex that bacon must, at any rate, take care of his own fortune, if the earl persisted in dangerous courses. bacon shows how he is to remove the impressions, strong in the queen's mind, of essex's defects; how he is, by due submissions and stratagems, to catch her humour-- "but whether i counsel you the best, or for the best, duty bindeth me to offer to you my wishes. i said to your lordship last time, _martha, martha, attendis ad plurima, unum sufficit_; win the queen: if this be not the beginning, of any other course i see no end." bacon gives a series of minute directions how essex is to disarm the queen's suspicions, and to neutralize the advantage which his rivals take of them; how he is to remove "the opinion of his nature being _opiniastre_ and not rulable;" how, avoiding the faults of leicester and hatton, he is, as far as he can, to "allege them for authors and patterns." especially, he must give up that show of soldier-like distinction, which the queen so disliked, and take some quiet post at court. he must not alarm the queen by seeking popularity; he must take care of his estate; he must get rid of some of his officers; and he must not be disquieted by other favourites. bacon wished, as he said afterwards, to see him "with a white staff in his hand, as my lord of leicester had," an honour and ornament to the court in the eyes of the people and foreign ambassadors. but essex was not fit for the part which bacon urged upon him, that of an obsequious and vigilant observer of the queen's moods and humours. as time went on, things became more and more difficult between him and his strange mistress; and there were never wanting men who, like cecil and raleigh, for good and bad reasons, feared and hated essex, and who had the craft and the skill to make the most of his inexcusable errors. at last he allowed himself, from ambition, from the spirit of contradiction, from the blind passion for doing what he thought would show defiance to his enemies, to be tempted into the irish campaign of . bacon at a later time claimed credit for having foreseen and foretold its issue. "i did as plainly see his overthrow, chained as it were by destiny to that journey, as it is possible for any man to ground a judgment on future contingents." he warned essex, so he thought in after years, of the difficulty of the work; he warned him that he would leave the queen in the hands of his enemies: "it would be ill for her, ill for him, ill for the state." "i am sure," he adds, "i never in anything in my life dealt with him in like earnestness by speech, by writing, and by all the means i could devise." but bacon's memory was mistaken. we have his letters. when essex went to ireland, bacon wrote only in the language of sanguine hope--so little did he see "overthrow chained by destiny to that journey," that "some good spirit led his pen to presage to his lordship success;" he saw in the enterprise a great occasion of honour to his friend; he gave prudent counsels, but he looked forward confidently to essex being as "fatal a captain to that war, as africanus was to the war of carthage." indeed, however anxious he may have been, he could not have foreseen essex's unaccountable and to this day unintelligible failure. but failure was the end, from whatever cause; failure, disgraceful and complete. then followed wild and guilty but abortive projects for retrieving his failure, by using his power in ireland to make himself formidable to his enemies at court, and even to the queen herself. he intrigued with tyrone; he intrigued with james of scotland; he plunged into a whirl of angry and baseless projects, which came to nothing the moment they were discussed. how empty and idle they were was shown by his return against orders to tell his own story at nonsuch, and by thus placing himself alone and undeniably in the wrong, in the power of the hostile council. of course it was not to be thought of that cecil should not use his advantage in the game. it was too early, irritated though the queen was, to strike the final blow. but it is impossible not to see, looking back over the miserable history, that essex was treated in a way which was certain, sooner or later, to make him, being what he was, plunge into a fatal and irretrievable mistake. he was treated as a cat treats a mouse; he was worried, confined, disgraced, publicly reprimanded, brought just within verge of the charge of treason, but not quite, just enough to discredit and alarm him, but to leave him still a certain amount of play. he was made to see that the queen's favour was not quite hopeless; but that nothing but the most absolute and unreserved humiliation could recover it. it was plain to any one who knew essex that this treatment would drive essex to madness. "these same gradations of yours"--so bacon represents himself expostulating with the queen on her caprices--"are fitter to corrupt than to correct any mind of greatness." they made essex desperate; he became frightened for his life, and he had reason to be so, though not in the way which he feared. at length came the stupid and ridiculous outbreak of the th of february, / , a plot to seize the palace and raise the city against the ministers, by the help of a few gentlemen armed only with their rapiers. as bacon himself told the queen, "if some base and cruel-minded persons had entered into such an action, it might have caused much blow and combustion; but it appeared well that they were such as knew not how to play the malefactors!" but it was sufficient to bring essex within the doom of treason. essex knew well what the stake was. he lost it, and deserved to lose it, little as his enemies deserved to win it; for they, too, were doing what would have cost them their heads if elizabeth had known it--corresponding, as essex was accused of doing, with scotland about the succession, and possibly with spain. but they were playing cautiously and craftily; he with bungling passion. he had been so long accustomed to power and place, that he could not endure that rivals should keep him out of it. they were content to have their own way, while affecting to be the humblest of servants; he would be nothing less than a mayor of the palace. he was guilty of a great public crime, as every man is who appeals to arms for anything short of the most sacred cause. he was bringing into england, which had settled down into peaceable ways, an imitation of the violent methods of france and the guises. but the crime as well as the penalty belonged to the age, and crimes legally said to be against the state mean morally very different things, according to the state of society and opinion. it is an unfairness verging on the ridiculous, when the ground is elaborately laid for keeping up the impression that essex was preparing a real treason against the queen like that of norfolk. it was a treason of the same sort and order as that for which northumberland sent somerset to the block: the treason of being an unsuccessful rival. meanwhile bacon had been getting gradually into the unofficial employ of the government. he had become one of the "learned counsel"--lawyers with subordinate and intermittent work, used when wanted, but without patent or salary, and not ranking with the regular law officers. the government had found him useful in affairs of the revenue, in framing interrogatories for prisoners in the tower, in drawing up reports of plots against the queen. he did not in this way earn enough to support himself; but he had thus come to have some degree of access to the queen, which he represents as being familiar and confidential, though he still perceived, as he says himself, that she did not like him. at the first news of essex's return to england, bacon greeted him-- "my lord,--conceiving that your lordship came now up in the person of a good servant to see your sovereign mistress, which kind of compliments are many times _instar magnorum meritorum_, and therefore it would be hard for me to find you, i have committed to this poor paper the humble salutations of him _that is more yours than any man's, and more yours than any man_. to these salutations i add a due and joyful gratulation, confessing that your lordship, in your last conference with me before your journey, spake not in vain, god making it good, that you trusted we should say _quis putasset_! which as it is found true in a happy sense, so i wish you do not find another _quis putasset_ in the manner of taking this so great a service. but i hope it is, as he said, _nubecula est, cito transibit_, and that your lordship's wisdom and obsequious circumspection and patience will turn all to the best. so referring all to some time that i may attend you, i commit you to god's best preservation." but when essex's conduct in ireland had to be dealt with, bacon's services were called for; and from this time his relations towards essex were altered. every one, no one better than the queen herself, knew all that he owed to essex. it is strangely illustrative of the time, that especially as bacon held so subordinate a position, he should have been required, and should have been trusted, to act against his only and most generous benefactor. it is strange, too, that however great his loyalty to the queen, however much and sincerely he might condemn his friend's conduct, he should think it possible to accept the task. he says that he made some remonstrance; and he says, no doubt truly, that during the first stage of the business he used the ambiguous position in which he was placed to soften essex's inevitable punishment, and to bring about a reconciliation between him and the queen. but he was required, as the queen's lawyer, to set forth in public essex's offences; and he admits that he did so "not over tenderly." yet all this, even if we have misgivings about it, is intelligible. if he had declined, he could not, perhaps, have done the service which he assures us that he tried to do for essex; and it is certain that he would have had to reckon with the terrible lady who in her old age still ruled england from the throne of henry viii., and who had certainly no great love for bacon himself. she had already shown him in a much smaller matter what was the forfeit to be paid for any resistance to her will. all the hopes of his life must perish; all the grudging and suspicious favours which he had won with such unremitting toil and patient waiting would be sacrificed, and he would henceforth live under the wrath of those who never forgave. and whatever he did for himself, he believed that he was serving essex. his scheming imagination and his indefatigable pen were at work. he tried strange indirect methods; he invented a correspondence between his brother and essex, which was to fall into the queen's hands in order to soften her wrath and show her essex's most secret feelings. when the queen proposed to dine with him at his lodge in twickenham park, "though i profess not to be a poet," he "prepared a sonnet tending and alluding to draw on her majesty's reconcilement to my lord." it was an awkward thing for one who had been so intimate with essex to be so deep in the counsels of those who hated him. he complains that many people thought him ungrateful and disloyal to his friend, and that stories circulated to his disadvantage, as if he were poisoning the queen's ear against essex. but he might argue fairly enough that, wilful and wrong-headed as essex had been, it was the best that he could now do for him; and as long as it was only a question of essex's disgrace and enforced absence from court, bacon could not be bound to give up the prospects of his life--indeed, his public duty as a subordinate servant of government--on account of his friend's inexcusable and dangerous follies. essex did not see it so, and in the subjoined correspondence had the advantage; but bacon's position, though a higher one might be imagined, where men had been such friends as these two men had been, is quite a defensible one: "my lord,--no man can better expound my doings than your lordship, which maketh me need to say the less. only i humbly pray you to believe that i aspire to the conscience and commendation first of _bonus civis_, which with us is a good and true servant to the queen, and next of _bonus vir_, that is an honest man. i desire your lordship also to think that though i confess i love some things much better than i love your lordship--as the queen's service, her quiet and contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like--yet i love few persons better than yourself, both for gratitude's sake and for your own virtues, which cannot hurt but by accident or abuse. of which my good affection i was ever ready and am ready to yield testimony by any good offices, but with such reservations as yourself cannot but allow; for as i was ever sorry that your lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting icarus's fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, specially ostrich's, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be more glad. and this is the axletree whereupon i have turned and shall turn, which to signify to you, though i think you are of yourself persuaded as much, is the cause of my writing; and so i commend your lordship to god's goodness. from gray's inn, this th day of july, . "your lordship's most humbly, "fr. bacon." to this letter essex returned an answer of dignified reserve, such as bacon might himself have dictated-- "mr. bacon,--i can neither expound nor censure your late actions, being ignorant of all of them, save one, and having directed my sight inward only, to examine myself. you do pray me to believe that you only aspire to the conscience and commendation of _bonus civis_ and _bonus vir_; and i do faithfully assure you, that while that is your ambition (though your course be active and mine contemplative), yet we shall both _convenire in codem tertio_ and _convenire inter nosipsos_. your profession of affection and offer of good offices are welcome to me. for answer to them i will say but this, that you have believed i have been kind to you, and you may believe that i cannot be other, either upon humour or my own election. i am a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else i should say somewhat of your poetical example. but this i must say, that i never flew with other wings than desire to merit and confidence in my sovereign's favour; and when one of these wings failed me i would light nowhere but at my sovereign's feet, though she suffered me to be bruised with my fall. and till her majesty, that knows i was never bird of prey, finds it to agree with her will and her service that my wings should be imped again, i have committed myself to the mire. no power but my god's and my sovereign's can alter this resolution of "your retired friend, "essex." but after essex's mad attempt in the city a new state of things arose. the inevitable result was a trial for high treason, a trial of which no one could doubt the purpose and end. the examination of accomplices revealed speeches, proposals, projects, not very intelligible to us in the still imperfectly understood game of intrigue that was going on among all parties at the end of elizabeth's reign, but quite enough to place essex at the mercy of the government and the offended queen. "the new information," says mr. spedding, "had been immediately communicated to coke and bacon." coke, as attorney-general, of course conducted the prosecution; and the next prominent person on the side of the crown was not the solicitor, or any other regular law officer, but bacon, though holding the very subordinate place of one of the "learned counsel." it does not appear that he thought it strange, that he showed any pain or reluctance, that he sought to be excused. he took it as a matter of course. the part assigned to bacon in the prosecution was as important as that of coke; and he played it more skilfully and effectively. trials in those days were confused affairs, often passing into a mere wrangle between the judges, lawyers, and lookers-on, and the prisoner at the bar. it was so in this case. coke is said to have blundered in his way of presenting the evidence, and to have been led away from the point into an altercation with essex. probably it really did not much matter; but the trial was getting out of its course and inclining in favour of the prisoner, till bacon--mr. spedding thinks, out of his regular turn--stepped forward and retrieved matters. this is mr. spedding's account of what bacon said and did: "by this time the argument had drifted so far away from the point that it must have been difficult for a listener to remember what it was that the prisoners were charged with, or how much of the charge had been proved. and coke, who was all this time the sole speaker on behalf of the crown, was still following each fresh topic that rose before him, without the sign of an intention or the intimation of a wish to return to the main question and reform the broken ranks of his evidence. luckily he seems to have been now at a loss what point to take next, and the pause gave bacon an opportunity of rising. it can hardly have been in pursuance of previous arrangements; for though it was customary in those days to distribute the evidence into parts and to assign several parts to several counsel, there had been no appearance as yet of any part being concluded. it is probable that the course of the trial had upset previous arrangements and confused the parts. at any rate so it was, however it came to pass, that when cecil and essex had at last finished their expostulation and parted with charitable prayers, each that the other might be forgiven, then (says our reporter) mr. bacon entered into a speech much after this fashion: "'in speaking of this late and horrible rebellion which hath been in the eyes and ears of all men, i shall save myself much labour in opening and enforcing the points thereof, insomuch as i speak not before a country jury of ignorant men, but before a most honourable assembly of the greatest peers of the land, whose wisdoms conceive far more than my tongue can utter; yet with your gracious and honourable favours i will presume, if not for information of your honours, yet for the discharge of my duty, to say thus much. no man can be ignorant, that knows matters of former ages--and all history makes it plain--that there was never any traitor heard of that durst directly attempt the seat of his liege prince but he always coloured his practices with some plausible pretence. for god hath imprinted such a majesty in the face of a prince that no private man dare approach the person of his sovereign with a traitorous intent. and therefore they run another side course, _oblique et à latere_: some to reform corruptions of the state and religion; some to reduce the ancient liberties and customs pretended to be lost and worn out; some to remove those persons that being in high places make themselves subject to envy; but all of them aim at the overthrow of the state and destruction of the present rulers. and this likewise is the use of those that work mischief of another quality; as cain, that first murderer, took up an excuse for his fact, shaming to outface it with impudency, thus the earl made his colour the severing some great men and councillors from her majesty's favour, and the fear he stood in of his pretended enemies lest they should murder him in his house. therefore he saith he was compelled to fly into the city for succour and assistance; not much unlike pisistratus, of whom it was so anciently written how he gashed and wounded himself, and in that sort ran crying into athens that his life was sought and like to have been taken away; thinking to have moved the people to have pitied him and taken his part by such counterfeited harm and danger; whereas his aim and drift was to take the government of the city into his hands and alter the form thereof. with like pretences of dangers and assaults the earl of essex entered the city of london and passed through the bowels thereof, blanching rumours that he should have been murdered and that the state was sold; whereas he had no such enemies, no such dangers: persuading themselves that if they could prevail all would have done well. but now _magna scelera terminantur in hæresin_; for you, my lord, should know that though princes give their subjects cause of discontent, though they take away the honours they have heaped upon them, though they bring them to a lower estate than they raised them from, yet ought they not to be so forgetful of their allegiance that they should enter into any undutiful act; much less upon rebellion, as you, my lord, have done. all whatsoever you have or can say in answer hereof are but shadows. and therefore methinks it were best for you to confess, not to justify.'" essex was provoked by bacon's incredulous sneer about enemies and dangers--"i call forth mr. bacon against mr. bacon," and referred to the letters which bacon had written in his name, and in which these dangerous enmities were taken for granted. bacon, in answer, repeated what he said so often--"that he had spent more time in vain in studying how to make the earl a good servant to the queen and state than he had done in anything else." once more coke got the proceedings into a tangle, and once more bacon came forward to repair the miscarriage of his leader. "'i have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to any prisoner; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons. may it please your grace, you have seen how weakly he hath shadowed his purpose and how slenderly he hath answered the objections against him. but, my lord, i doubt the variety of matters and the many digressions may minister occasion of forgetfulness, and may have severed the judgments of the lords; and therefore i hold it necessary briefly to recite the judges' opinions.' "that being done, he proceeded to this effect: "'now put the case that the earl of essex's intents were, as he would have it believed, to go only as a suppliant to her majesty. shall their petitions be presented by armed petitioners? this must needs bring loss of property to the prince. neither is it any point of law, as my lord of southampton would have it believed, that condemns them of treason. to take secret counsel, to execute it, to run together in numbers armed with weapons--what can be the excuse? warned by the lord keeper, by a herald, and yet persist! will any simple man take this to be less than treason?' "the earl of essex answered that if he had purposed anything against others than those his private enemies, he would not have stirred with so slender a company. whereunto mr. bacon answered: "'it was not the company you carried with you but the assistance you hoped for in the city which you trusted unto. the duke of guise thrust himself into the streets of paris on the day of the barricades in his doublet and hose, attended only with eight gentlemen, and found that help in the city which (thanks be to god) you failed of here. and what followed? the king was forced to put himself into a pilgrim's weeds, and in that disguise to steal away to scape their fury. even such was my lord's confidence too, and his pretence the same--an all-hail and a kiss to the city. but the end was treason, as hath been sufficiently proved. but when he had once delivered and engaged himself so far into that which the shallowness of his conceit could not accomplish as he expected, the queen for her defence taking arms against him, he was glad to yield himself; and thinking to colour his practices, turned his pretexts, and alleged the occasion thereof to proceed from a private quarrel.' "to this" (adds the reporter) "the earl answered little. nor was anything said afterwards by either of the prisoners, either in the thrust-and-parry dialogue with coke that followed, or when they spoke at large to the question why judgment should not be pronounced, which at all altered the complexion of the case. they were both found guilty and sentence passed in the usual form." bacon's legal position was so subordinate a place that there must have been a special reason for his employment. it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, on the part of the government, bacon was thus used for the very reason that he had been the friend of essex. he was not commonly called upon in such prosecutions. he was not employed by cecil in the winchester trials of raleigh, grey, and cobham, three years afterwards, nor in those connected with the gunpowder plot. he was called upon now because no one could so much damage essex; and this last proof of his ready service was required by those whose favour, since essex had gone hopelessly wrong, he had been diligently seeking. and bacon acquiesced in the demand, apparently without surprise. no record remains to show that he felt any difficulty in playing his part. he had persuaded himself that his public duty, his duty as a good citizen to the queen and the commonwealth, demanded of him that he should obey the call to do his best to bring a traitor to punishment. public duty has claims on a man as well as friendship, and in many conceivable cases claims paramount to those of friendship. and yet friendship, too, has claims, at least on a man's memory. essex had been a dear friend, if words could mean anything. he had done more than any man had done for bacon, generously and nobly, and bacon had acknowledged it in the amplest terms. only a year before he had written, "i am as much yours as any man's, and as much yours as any man." it is not, and it was not, a question of essex's guilt. it may be a question whether the whole matter was not exaggerated as to its purpose, as it certainly was as to its real danger and mischief. we at least know that his rivals dabbled in intrigue and foolish speeches as well as he; that little more than two years afterwards raleigh and grey and cobham were condemned for treason in much the same fashion as he was; that cecil to the end of his days--with whatever purpose--was a pensioner of spain. the question was not whether essex was guilty. the question for bacon was, whether it was becoming in him, having been what he had been to essex, to take a leading part in proceedings which were to end in his ruin and death. he was not a judge. he was not a regular law officer like coke. his only employment had been casual and occasional. he might, most naturally, on the score of his old friendship, have asked to be excused. condemning, as he did, his friend's guilt and folly, he might have refused to take part in a cause of blood, in which his best friend must perish. he might honestly have given up essex as incorrigible, and have retired to stand apart in sorrow and silence while the inevitable tragedy was played out. the only answer to this is, that to have declined would have incurred the queen's displeasure: he would have forfeited any chance of advancement; nay, closely connected as he had been with essex, he might have been involved in his friend's ruin. but inferior men have marred their fortunes by standing by their friends in not undeserved trouble, and no one knew better than bacon what was worthy and noble in human action. the choice lay before him. he seems hardly to have gone through any struggle. he persuaded himself that he could not help himself, under the constraint of his duty to the queen, and he did his best to get essex condemned. and this was not all. the death of essex was a shock to the popularity of elizabeth greater than anything that had happened in her long reign. bacon's name also had come into men's mouths as that of a time-server who played fast and loose with essex and his enemies, and who, when he had got what he could from essex, turned to see what he could get from those who put him to death. a justification of the whole affair was felt to be necessary; and bacon was fixed upon for the distinction and the dishonour of doing it. no one could tell the story so well, and it was felt that he would not shrink from it. nor did he. in cold blood he sat down to blacken essex, using his intimate personal knowledge of the past to strengthen his statements against a friend who was in his grave, and for whom none could answer but bacon himself. it is a well-compacted and forcible account of essex's misdoings, on which of course the colour of deliberate and dangerous treason was placed. much of it, no doubt, was true; but even of the facts, and much more of the colour, there was no check to be had, and it is certain that it was an object to the government to make out the worst. it is characteristic that bacon records that he did not lose sight of the claims of courtesy, and studiously spoke of "my lord of essex" in the draft submitted for correction to the queen; but she was more unceremonious, and insisted that the "rebel" should be spoken of simply as "essex." after a business of this kind, fines and forfeitures flowed in abundantly, and were "usually bestowed on deserving servants or favoured suitors by way of reward;" and bacon came in for his share. out of one of the fines he received £ . "the queen hath done something for me," he writes to a friendly creditor, "though not in the proportion i had hoped," and he afterwards asked for something more. it was rather under the value of essex's gift to him in . but she still refused him all promotion. he was without an official place in the queen's service, and he never was allowed to have it. it is clear that the "declaration of the treason of the earl of essex," if it justified the government, did not remove the odium which had fallen on bacon. mr. spedding says that he can find no signs of it. the proof of it is found in the "apology" which bacon found it expedient to write after elizabeth's death and early in james's reign. he found that the recollection of the way in which he had dealt with his friend hung heavy upon him; men hesitated to trust him in spite of his now recognised ability. accordingly, he drew up an apology, which he addressed to lord mountjoy, the friend, in reality half the accomplice, of essex, in his wild, ill-defined plan for putting pressure on elizabeth. it is a clear, able, of course _ex parte_ statement of the doings of the three chief actors, two of whom could no longer answer for themselves, or correct and contradict the third. it represents the queen as implacable and cruel, essex as incorrigibly and outrageously wilful, proud, and undutiful, bacon himself as using every effort and device to appease the queen's anger and suspiciousness, and to bring essex to a wiser and humbler mind. the picture is indeed a vivid one, and full of dramatic force, of an unrelenting and merciless mistress bent on breaking and bowing down to the dust the haughty spirit of a once-loved but rebellious favourite, whom, though he has deeply offended, she yet wishes to bring once more under her yoke; and of the calm, keen-witted looker-on, watching the dangerous game, not without personal interest, but with undisturbed presence of mind, and doing his best to avert an irreparable and fatal breach. how far he honestly did his best for his misguided friend we can only know from his own report; but there is no reason to think that he did essex ill service, though he notices in passing an allegation that the queen in one of her angry fits had charged him with this. but his interest clearly was to make up the quarrel between the queen and essex. bacon would have been a greater man with both of them if he had been able to do so. he had been too deeply in essex's intimacy to make his new position of mediator, with a strong bias on the queen's side, quite safe and easy for a man of honourable mind; but a cool-judging and prudent man may well have acted as he represents himself acting without forgetting what he owed to his friend. till the last great moment of trial there is a good deal to be said for bacon: a man keenly alive to essex's faults, with a strong sense of what he owed to the queen and the state, and with his own reasonable chances of rising greatly prejudiced by essex's folly. but at length came the crisis which showed the man, and threw light on all that had passed before, when he was picked out, out of his regular place, to be charged with the task of bringing home the capital charge against essex. he does not say he hesitated. he does not say that he asked to be excused the terrible office. he did not flinch as the minister of vengeance for those who required that essex should die. he did his work, we are told by his admiring biographer, better than coke, and repaired the blunders of the prosecution. he passes over very shortly this part of the business: "it was laid upon me with the rest of my fellows;" yet it is the knot and key of the whole, as far as his own character is concerned. bacon had his public duty: his public duty may have compelled him to stand apart from essex. but it was his interest, it was no part of his public duty, which required him to accept the task of accuser of his friend, and in his friend's direst need calmly to drive home a well-directed stroke that should extinguish chances and hopes, and make his ruin certain. no one who reads his anxious letters about preferment and the queen's favour, about his disappointed hopes, about his straitened means and distress for money, about his difficulties with his creditors--he was twice arrested for debt--can doubt that the question was between his own prospects and his friend; and that to his own interest he sacrificed his friend and his own honour. chapter iii. bacon and james i. bacon's life was a double one. there was the life of high thinking, of disinterested aims, of genuine enthusiasm, of genuine desire to delight and benefit mankind, by opening new paths to wonder and knowledge and power. and there was the put on and worldly life, the life of supposed necessities for the provision of daily bread, the life of ambition and self-seeking, which he followed, not without interest and satisfaction, but at bottom because he thought he must--must be a great man, must be rich, must live in the favour of the great, because without it his great designs could not be accomplished. his original plan of life was disclosed in his letter to lord burghley: to get some office with an assured income and not much work, and then to devote the best of his time to his own subjects. but this, if it was really his plan, was gradually changed: first, because he could not get such a place; and next because his connection with essex, the efforts to gain him the attorney's place, and the use which the queen made of him after essex could do no more for him, drew him more and more into public work, and specially the career of the law. we know that he would not by preference have chosen the law, and did not feel that his vocation lay that way; but it was the only way open to him for mending his fortunes. and so the two lives went on side by side, the worldly one--he would have said, the practical one--often interfering with the life of thought and discovery, and partly obscuring it, but yet always leaving it paramount in his own mind. his dearest and most cherished ideas, the thoughts with which he was most at home and happiest, his deepest and truest ambitions, were those of an enthusiastic and romantic believer in a great discovery just within his grasp. they were such as the dreams and visions of his great franciscan namesake, and of the imaginative seekers after knowledge in the middle ages, real or mythical, albert the great, cornelius agrippa, dr. faustus; they were the eager, undoubting hopes of the physical students in italy and england in his own time, giordano bruno, telesio, campanella, gilbert, galileo, or the founders of the italian prototype of "solomon's house" in the _new atlantis_, the precursor of our royal societies, the academy of the _lincei_ at rome. among these meditations was his inner life. but however he may have originally planned his course, and though at times under the influence of disappointment he threatened to retire to cambridge or to travel abroad, he had bound himself fast to public life, and soon ceased to think of quitting it. and he had a real taste for it--for its shows, its prizes, for the laws and turns of the game, for its debates and vicissitudes. he was no mere idealist or recluse to undervalue or despise the real grandeur of the world. he took the keenest interest in the nature and ways of mankind; he liked to observe, to generalise in shrewd and sometimes cynical epigrams. he liked to apply his powerful and fertile intellect to the practical problems of society and government, to their curious anomalies, to their paradoxical phenomena; he liked to address himself, either as an expounder or a reformer, to the principles and entanglements of english law; he aspired, both as a lecturer and a legislator, to improve and simplify it. it was not beyond his hopes to shape a policy, to improve administration, to become powerful by bringing his sagacity and largeness of thought to the service of the state, in reconciling conflicting forces, in mediating between jealous parties and dangerous claims. and he liked to enter into the humours of a court; to devote his brilliant imagination and affluence of invention either to devising a pageant which should throw all others into the shade, or a compromise which should get great persons out of some difficulty of temper or pique. in all these things he was as industrious, as laborious, as calmly persevering and tenacious, as he was in his pursuit of his philosophical speculations. he was a compound of the most adventurous and most diversified ambition, with a placid and patient temper, such as we commonly associate with moderate desires and the love of retirement and an easy life. to imagine and dare anything, and never to let go the object of his pursuit, is one side of him; on the other he is obsequiously desirous to please and fearful of giving offence, the humblest and most grateful and also the most importunate of suitors, ready to bide his time with an even cheerfulness of spirit, which yet it was not safe to provoke by ill offices and the wish to thwart him. he never misses a chance of proffering his services; he never lets pass an opportunity of recommending himself to those who could help him. he is so bent on natural knowledge that we have a sense of incongruity when we see him engaging in politics as if he had no other interest. he throws himself with such zest into the language of the moralist, the theologian, the historian, that we forget we have before us the author of a new departure in physical inquiry, and the unwearied compiler of tables of natural history. when he is a lawyer, he seems only a lawyer. if he had not been the author of the _instauratio_, his life would not have looked very different from that of any other of the shrewd and supple lawyers who hung on to the tudor and stuart courts, and who unscrupulously pushed their way to preferment. he claimed to be, in spite of the misgivings of elizabeth and her ministers, as devoted to public work and as capable of it as any of them. he was ready for anything, for any amount of business, ready, as in everything, to take infinite trouble about it. the law, if he did not like it, was yet no by-work with him; he was as truly ambitious as the men with whom he maintained so keen and for long so unsuccessful a rivalry. he felt bitterly the disappointment of seeing men like coke and fleming and doddridge and hobart pass before him; he could not, if he had been only a lawyer, have coveted more eagerly the places, refused to him, which they got; only, he had besides a whole train of purposes, an inner and supreme ambition, of which they knew nothing. and with all this there is no apparent consciousness of these manifold and varied interests. he never affected to conceal from himself his superiority to other men in his aims and in the grasp of his intelligence. but there is no trace that he prided himself on the variety and versatility of these powers, or that he even distinctly realized to himself that it was anything remarkable that he should have so many dissimilar objects and be able so readily to pursue them in such different directions. it is doubtful whether, as long as elizabeth lived, bacon could ever have risen above his position among the "learned counsel," an office without patent or salary or regular employment. she used, him, and he was willing to be used; but he plainly did not appear in her eyes to be the kind of man who would suit her in the more prominent posts of her government. unusual and original ability is apt, till it is generally recognised, to carry with it suspicion and mistrust as to its being really all that it seems to be. perhaps she thought of the possibility of his flying out unexpectedly at some inconvenient pinch, and attempting to serve her interests, not in her way, but in his own; perhaps she distrusted in business and state affairs so brilliant a discourser, whose heart was known, first and above all, to be set on great dreams of knowledge; perhaps those interviews with her in which he describes the counsels which he laid before her, and in which his shrewdness and foresight are conspicuous, may not have been so welcome to her as he imagined; perhaps, it is not impossible, that he may have been too compliant for her capricious taste, and too visibly anxious to please. perhaps, too, she could not forget, in spite of what had happened, that he had been the friend, and not the very generous friend, of essex. but, except as to a share of the forfeitures, with which he was not satisfied, his fortunes did not rise under elizabeth. whatever may have been the queen's feelings towards him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which lasted into the reign of james, was steadily adverse to his advancement. burghley had been strangely niggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephew; he was going off the scene, and probably did not care to trouble himself about a younger and uncongenial aspirant to service. but his place was taken by his son, robert cecil; and cecil might naturally have been expected to welcome the co-operation of one of his own family who was foremost among the rising men of cecil's own generation, and who certainly was most desirous to do him service. but it is plain that he early made up his mind to keep bacon in the background. it is easy to imagine reasons, though the apparent short-sightedness of the policy may surprise us; but cecil was too reticent and self-controlled a man to let his reasons appear, and his words, in answer to his cousin's applications for his assistance, were always kind, encouraging, and vague. but we must judge by the event, and that makes it clear that cecil did not care to see bacon in high position. nothing can account for bacon's strange failure for so long a time to reach his due place in the public service but the secret hostility, whatever may have been the cause, of cecil. there was also another difficulty. coke was the great lawyer of the day, a man whom the government could not dispense with, and whom it was dangerous to offend. and coke thoroughly disliked bacon. he thought lightly of his law, and he despised his refinement and his passion for knowledge. he cannot but have resented the impertinence, as he must have thought it, of bacon having been for a whole year his rival for office. it is possible that if people then agreed with mr. spedding's opinion as to the management of essex's trial, he may have been irritated by jealousy; but a couple of months after the trial (april , ) bacon sent to cecil, with a letter of complaint, the following account of a scene in court between coke and himself: "_a true remembrance of the abuse i received of mr. attorney-general publicly in the exchequer the first day of term; for the truth whereof i refer myself to all that were present._ "i moved to have a reseizure of the lands of geo. moore, a relapsed recusant, a fugitive and a practising traytor; and showed better matter for the queen against the discharge by plea, which is ever with a _salvo jure_. and this i did in as gentle and reasonable terms as might be. "mr. attorney kindled at it, and said, '_mr. bacon, if you have any tooth against me pluck it out; for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do you good._' i answered coldly in these very words: '_mr. attorney, i respect you; i fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more i will think of it._' "he replied, '_i think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness towards you, who are less than little; less than the least;_' and other such strange light terms he gave me, with that insulting which cannot be expressed. "herewith stirred, yet i said no more but this: '_mr. attorney, do not depress me so far; for i have been your better, and may be again, when it please the queen._' "with this he spake, neither i nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born attorney-general; and in the end bade me not meddle with the queen's business, but with mine own; and that i was unsworn, etc. i told him, sworn or unsworn was all one to an honest man; and that i ever set my service first, and myself second; and wished to god that he would do the like. "then he said, it were good to clap a _cap. ultegatum_ upon my back! to which i only said he could not; and that he was at fault, for he hunted upon an old scent. he gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which i answered with silence, and showing that i was not moved with them." the threat of the _capias ultegatum_ was probably in reference to the arrest of bacon for debt in september, . after this we are not surprised at bacon writing to coke, "who take to yourself a liberty to disgrace and disable my law, my experience, my discretion," that, "since i missed the solicitor's place (the rather i think by your means) i cannot expect that you and i shall ever serve as attorney and solicitor together, but either serve with another on your remove, or step into some other course." and coke, no doubt, took care that it should be so. cecil, too, may possibly have thought that bacon gave no proof of his fitness for affairs in thus bringing before him a squabble in which both parties lost their tempers. bacon was not behind the rest of the world in "the posting of men of good quality towards the king," in the rash which followed the queen's death, of those who were eager to proffer their services to james, for whose peaceful accession cecil had so skilfully prepared the way. he wrote to every one who, he thought, could help him: to cecil, and to cecil's man--"i pray you, as you find time let him know that he is the personage in the state which i love most;" to northumberland, "if i may be of any use to your lordship, by my head, tongue, pen, means, or friends, i humbly pray you to hold me your own;" to the king's scotch friends and servants, even to southampton, the friend of essex, who had been shut up in the tower since his condemnation with essex, and who was now released. "this great change," bacon assured him, "hath wrought in me no other change towards your lordship than this, that i may safely be now that which i truly was before." bacon found in after years that southampton was not so easily conciliated. but at present bacon was hopeful: "in mine own particular," he writes, "i have many comforts and assurances; but in mine own opinion the chief is, that the _canvassing world is gone, and the deserving world is come_." he asks to be recommended to the king--"i commend myself to your love and to the well-using of my name, as well in repressing and answering for me, if there be any biting or nibbling at it in that place, as in impressing a good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the king, as otherwise in that court." his pen had been used under the government of the queen, and he had offered a draft of a proclamation to the king's advisers. but though he obtained an interview with the king, james's arrival in england brought no immediate prospect of improvement in bacon's fortunes. indeed, his name was at first inadvertently passed over in the list of queen's servants who were to retain their places. the first thing we hear of is his arrest a second time for debt; and his letters of thanks to cecil, who had rendered him assistance, are written in deep depression. "for my purpose or course i desire to meddle as little as i can in the king's causes, his majesty now abounding in counsel, and to follow my private thrift and practice, and to marry with some convenient advancement. for as for any ambition, i do assure your honour, mine is quenched. in the queen's, my excellent mistress's, time the _quorum_ was small: her service was a kind of freehold, and it was a more solemn time. all those points agreed with my nature and judgment. my ambition now i shall only put upon my pen, whereby i shall be able to maintain memory and merit of the times succeeding. "lastly, for this divulged and almost prostituted title of knighthood, i could without charge, by your honour's mean, be content to have it, both because of this late disgrace and because i have three new knights in my mess in gray's inn's commons; and because i have found out an alderman's daughter, an handsome maiden, to my liking." cecil, however, seems to have required that the money should be repaid by the day; and bacon only makes a humble request, which, it might be supposed, could have been easily granted. "it may please your good lordship,--in answer of your last letter, your money shall be ready before your day: principal, interest, and costs of suit. so the sheriff promised, when i released errors; and a jew takes no more. the rest cannot be forgotten, for i cannot forget your lordship's _dum memor ipse mei_; and if there have been _aliquid nimis_, it shall be amended. and, to be plain with your lordship, that will quicken me now which slackened me before. then i thought you might have had more use of me than now i suppose you are like to have. not but i think the impediment will be rather in my mind than in the matter or times. but to do you service i will come out of my religion at any time. "for my knighthood, i wish the manner might be such as might grace me, since the matter will not; i mean, that i might not be merely gregarious in a troop. the coronation is at hand. it may please your lordship to let me hear from you speedily. so i continue your lordship's ever much bounden, "fr. bacon. "from gorhambury, this th of july, ." but it was not done. he "obtained his title, but not in a manner to distinguish him. he was knighted at whitehall two days before the coronation, but had to share the honour with others." it was not quite true that his "ambition was quenched." for the rest of cecil's life cecil was the first man at james's court; and to the last there was one thing that bacon would not appear to believe--he did not choose to believe that it was cecil who kept him back from employment and honour. to the last he persisted in assuming that cecil was the person who would help, if he could, a kinsman devoted to his interests and profoundly conscious of his worth. to the last he commended his cause to cecil in terms of unstinted affection and confiding hope. it is difficult to judge of the sincerity of such language. the mere customary language of compliment employed by every one at this time was of a kind which to us sounds intolerable. it seems as if nothing that ingenuity could devise was too extravagant for an honest man to use, and for a man who respected himself to accept. it must not, indeed, be forgotten that conventionalities, as well as insincerity, differ in their forms in different times; and that insincerity may lurk behind frank and clear words, when they are the fashion, as much as in what is like mere fulsome adulation. but words mean something, in spite of forms and fashions. when a man of great genius writes his private letters, we wish generally to believe on the whole what he says; and there are no limits to the esteem, the honour, the confidence, which bacon continued to the end to express towards cecil. bacon appeared to trust him--appeared, in spite of continued disappointments, to rely on his good-will and good offices. but for one reason or another bacon still remained in the shade. he was left to employ his time as he would, and to work his way by himself. he was not idle. he prepared papers which he meant should come before the king, on the pressing subjects of the day. the hampton court conference between the bishops and the puritan leaders was at hand, and he drew up a moderating paper on the _pacification of the church_. the feeling against him for his conduct towards essex had not died away, and he addressed to lord mountjoy that _apology concerning the earl of essex_, so full of interest, so skilfully and forcibly written, so vivid a picture of the queen's ways with her servants, which has every merit except that of clearing bacon from the charge of disloyalty to his best friend. the various questions arising out of the relations of the two kingdoms, now united under james, were presenting themselves. they were not of easy solution, and great mischief would follow if they were solved wrongly. bacon turned his attention to them. he addressed a discourse to the king on the union of the two kingdoms, the first of a series of discussions on the subject which bacon made peculiarly his own, and which, no doubt, first drew the king's attention and favour to him. but for the first year of james's reign he was unnoticed by the king, and he was able to give his attention more freely to the great thought and hope of his life. this time of neglect gave him the opportunity of leisurely calling together and examining the ideas which had long had hold of his mind about the state of human knowledge, about the possibilities of extending it, about the hopes and powers which that new knowledge opened, and about the methods of realising this great prospect. this, the passion of his life, never asleep even in the hottest days of business or the most hopeless days of defeat, must have had full play during these days of suspended public employment. he was a man who was not easily satisfied with his attempts to arrange the order and proportions of his plans for mastering that new world of unknown truth, which he held to be within the grasp of man if he would only dare to seize it; and he was much given to vary the shape of his work, and to try experiments in composition and even style. he wrote and rewrote. besides what was finally published, there remains a larger quantity of work which never reached the stage of publication. he repeated over and over again the same thoughts, the same images and characteristic sayings. among these papers is one which sums up his convictions about the work before him, and the vocation to which he had been called in respect of it. it is in the form of a "proem" to a treatise on the _interpretation of nature_. it was never used in his published works; but, as mr. spedding says, it has a peculiar value as an authentic statement of what he looked upon as his special business in life. it is this mission which he states to himself in the following paper. it is drawn up in "stately latin." mr. spedding's translation is no unworthy representation of the words of the great prophet of knowledge: "believing that i was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and water, belongs to everybody, i set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service i was myself best fitted by nature to perform. "now among all the benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, i found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life.... but if a man could succeed, not in striking out some particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in nature--a light that should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border regions that confine upon the circle of our present knowledge; and so spreading further and further should presently disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the world--that man (i thought) would be the benefactor indeed of the human race--the propagator of man's empire over the universe, the champion of liberty, the conqueror and subduer of necessities. "for myself, i found that i was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point), and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to reconsider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. so i thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with truth. "nevertheless, because my birth and education had seasoned me in business of state; and because opinions (so young as i was) would sometimes stagger me; and because i thought that a man's own country has some special claims upon him more than the rest of the world; and because i hoped that, if i rose to any place of honour in the state, i should have a larger command of industry and ability to help me in my work--for these reasons i both applied myself to acquire the arts of civil life, and commended my service, so far as in modesty and honesty i might, to the favour of such friends as had any influence. in which also i had another motive: for i felt that those things i have spoken of--be they great or small--reach no further than the condition and culture of this mortal life; and i was not without hope (the condition of religion being at that time not very prosperous) that if i came to hold office in the state, i might get something done too for the good of men's souls. when i found, however, that my zeal was mistaken for ambition, and my life had already readied the turning-point, and my breaking health reminded me how ill i could afford to be so slow, and i reflected, moreover, that in leaving undone the good that i could do by myself alone, and applying myself to that which could not be done without the help and consent of others, i was by no means discharging the duty that lay upon me--i put all those thoughts aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work. nor am i discouraged from it because i see signs in the times of the decline and overthrow of that knowledge and erudition which is now in use. not that i apprehend any more barbarian invasions (unless possibly the spanish empire should recover its strength, and having crushed other nations by arms should itself sink under its own weight); but the civil wars which may be expected, i think (judging from certain fashions which have come in of late), to spread through many countries--together with the malignity of sects, and those compendious artifices and devices which have crept into the place of solid erudition--seem to portend for literature and the sciences a tempest not less fatal, and one against which the printing-office will be no effectual security. and no doubt but that fair-weather learning which is nursed by leisure, blossoms under reward and praise, which cannot withstand the shock of opinion, and is liable to be abused by tricks and quackery, will sink under such impediments as these. far otherwise is it with that knowledge whose dignity is maintained by works of utility and power. for the injuries, therefore, which should proceed from the times, i am not afraid of them; and for the injuries which proceed from men, i am not concerned. for if any one charge me with seeking to be wise over-much, i answer simply that modesty and civil respect are fit for civil matters; in contemplations nothing is to be respected but truth. if any one call on me for _works_, and that presently, i tell him frankly, without any imposture at all, that for me--a man not old, of weak health, my hands full of civil business, entering without guide or light upon an argument of all others the most obscure--i hold it enough to have constructed the machine, though i may not succeed in setting it on work.... if, again, any one ask me, not indeed for actual works, yet for definite premises and forecasts of the works that are to be, i would have him know that the knowledge which we now possess will not teach a man even what to _wish_. lastly--though this is a matter of less moment--if any of our politicians, who used to make their calculations and conjectures according to persons and precedents, must needs interpose his judgment in a thing of this nature, i would but remind him how (according to the ancient fable) the lame man keeping the course won the race of the swift man who left it; and that there is no thought to be taken about precedents, for the thing is without precedent. "for myself, my heart is not set upon any of those things which depend upon external accidents. i am not hunting for fame: i have no desire to found a sect, after the fashion of heresiarchs; and to look for any private gain from such an undertaking as this i count both ridiculous and base. enough for me the consciousness of well-deserving, and those real and effectual results with which fortune itself cannot interfere." in james's first parliament met, and with it bacon returned to an industrious public life, which was not to be interrupted till it finally came to an end with his strange and irretrievable fall. the opportunity had come; and bacon, patient, vigilant, and conscious of great powers and indefatigable energy, fully aware of all the conditions of the time, pushed at once to the front in the house of commons. he lost no time in showing that he meant to make himself felt. the house of commons had no sooner met than it was involved in a contest with the chancery, with the lords, and finally with the king himself, about its privileges--in this case its exclusive right to judge of the returns of its members. bacon's time was come for showing the king both that he was willing to do him service, and that he was worth being employed. he took a leading part in the discussions, and was trusted by the house as their spokesman and reporter in the various conferences. the king, in his overweening confidence in his absolute prerogative, had, indeed, got himself into serious difficulty; for the privilege was one which it was impossible for the commons to give up. but bacon led the house to agree to an arrangement which saved their rights; and under a cloud of words of extravagant flattery he put the king in good-humour, and elicited from him the spontaneous proposal of a compromise which ended a very dangerous dispute. "the king's voice," said bacon, in his report to the house, "was the voice of god in man, the good spirit of god in the mouth of man; i do not say the voice of god and not of man; i am not one of herod's flatterers; a curse fell upon him that said it, a curse on him that suffered it. we might say, as was said to solomon, we are glad, o king, that we give account to you, because you discern what is spoken." the course of this parliament, in which bacon was active and prominent, showed the king, probably for the first time, what bacon was. the session was not so stormy as some of the later ones; but occasions arose which revealed to the king and to the house of commons the deeply discordant assumptions and purposes by which each party was influenced, and which brought out bacon's powers of adjusting difficulties and harmonising claims. he never wavered in his loyalty to his own house, where it is clear that his authority was great. but there was no limit to the submission and reverence which he expressed to the king, and, indeed, to his desire to bring about what the king desired, as far as it could be safely done. dealing with the commons, his policy was "to be content with the substance and not to stand on the form." dealing with the king, he was forward to recognise all that james wanted recognised of his kingcraft and his absolute sovereignty. bacon assailed with a force and keenness which showed what he could do as an opponent, the amazing and intolerable grievances arising out of the survival of such feudal customs as wardship and purveyance; customs which made over a man's eldest son and property, during a minority, to the keeping of the king, that is, to a king's favourite, and allowed the king's servants to cut down a man's timber before the windows of his house. but he urged that these grievances should be taken away with the utmost tenderness for the king's honour and the king's purse. in the great and troublesome questions relating to the union he took care to be fully prepared. he was equally strong on points of certain and substantial importance, equally quick to suggest accommodations where nothing substantial was touched. his attitude was one of friendly and respectful independence. it was not misunderstood by the king. bacon, who had hitherto been an unsworn and unpaid member of the learned counsel, now received his office by patent, with a small salary, and he was charged with the grave business of preparing the work for the commissioners for the union of the kingdoms, in which, when the commission met, he took a foremost and successful part. but the parliament before which their report was to be laid did not meet till ten months after the work of the commission was done (dec., --nov., ). for nearly another year bacon had no public work. the leisure was used for his own objects. he was interested in history in a degree only second to his interest in nature; indeed, but for the engrossing claims of his philosophy of nature, he might have been the first and one of the greatest of our historians. he addressed a letter to the chancellor ellesmere on the deficiencies of british history, and on the opportunities which offered for supplying them. he himself could at present do nothing; "but because there be so many good painters, both for hand and colours, it needeth but encouragement and instructions to give life and light unto it." but he mistook, in this as in other instances, the way in which such things are done. men do not accomplish such things to order, but because their souls compel them, as he himself was building up his great philosophical structure, in the midst of his ambition and disappointment. and this interval of quiet enabled him to bring out his first public appeal on the subject which most filled his mind. he completed in english the _two books of the advancement of knowledge_, which were published at a book-shop at the gateway of gray's inn in holborn (oct., ). he intended that it should be published in latin also; but he was dissatisfied with the ornate translation sent him from cambridge, and probably he was in a hurry to get the book out. it was dedicated to the king, not merely by way of compliment, but with the serious hope that his interest might be awakened in the subjects which were nearest bacon's heart. like other of bacon's hopes, it was disappointed. the king's studies and the king's humours were not of the kind to make him care for bacon's visions of the future, or his eager desire to begin at once a novel method of investigating the facts and laws of nature; and the appeal to him fell dead. bacon sent the book about to his friends with explanatory letters. to sir t. bodley he writes: "i think no man may more truly say with the psalm, _multum incola fuit anima mea_ [ps. ] than myself. for i do confess since i was of any understanding, my mind hath in effect been absent from that i have done; and in absence are many errors which i willingly acknowledge; and among them, this great one which led the rest: that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play a part, i have led my life in civil causes, for which i was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by the preoccupation of my mind. therefore, calling myself home, i have now enjoyed myself; whereof likewise i desire to make the world partaker." to lord salisbury, in a note of elaborate compliment, he describes his purpose by an image which he repeats more than once. "i shall content myself to awake better spirits, _like a bell-ringer, which is first up to call others to church_." but the two friends whose judgment he chiefly valued, and who, as on other occasions, were taken into his most intimate literary confidence, were bishop andrewes, his "inquisitor," and toby matthews, a son of the archbishop of york, who had become a roman catholic, and lived in italy, seeing a good deal of learned men there, apparently the most trusted of all bacon's friends. when parliament met again in november, , the gunpowder plot and its consequences filled all minds. bacon was not employed about it by government, and his work in the house was confined to carrying on matters left unfinished from the previous session. on the rumour of legal promotions and vacancies bacon once more applied to salisbury for the solicitorship (march, ). but no changes were made, and bacon was "still next the door." in may, , he did what had for some time been in his thoughts: he married; not the lady whom essex had tried to win for him, that lady hatton who became the wife of his rival coke, but one whom salisbury helped him to gain, an alderman's daughter, alice barnham, "an handsome maiden," with some money and a disagreeable mother, by her second marriage, lady packington. bacon's curious love of pomp amused the gossips of the day. "sir francis bacon," writes carleton to chamberlain, "was married yesterday to his young wench, in maribone chapel. he was clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion." of his married life we hear next to nothing: in his _essay on marriage_ he is not enthusiastic in its praise; almost the only thing we know is that in his will, twenty years afterwards, he showed his dissatisfaction with his wife, who after his death married again. but it gave him an additional reason, and an additional plea, for pressing for preferment, and in the summer of the opening came. coke was made chief-justice of the common pleas, leaving the attorney's place vacant. a favourite of salisbury's, hobart, became attorney, and bacon hoped for some arrangement by which the solicitor doddridge might be otherwise provided for, and he himself become solicitor. hopeful as he was, and patient of disappointments, and of what other men would have thought injustice and faithlessness, he felt keenly both the disgrace and the inconvenience of so often expecting place, and being so often passed over. while the question was pending, he wrote to the king, the chancellor, and salisbury. his letter to the king is a record in his own words of his public services. to the chancellor, whom he believed to be his supporter, he represented the discredit which he suffered--he was a common gaze and a speech;" "the little reputation which by his industry he gathered, being scattered and taken away by continual disgraces, _every new man coming above me_;" and his wife and his wife's friends were making him feel it. the letters show what bacon thought to be his claims, and how hard he found it to get them recognised. to the chancellor he urged, among other things, that time was slipping by-- "i humbly pray your lordship to consider that time groweth precious with me, and that a married man is seven years elder in his thoughts the first day.... and were it not to satisfy my wife's friends, and to get myself out of being a common gaze and a speech, i protest before god i would never speak word for it. but to conclude, as my honourable lady your wife was some mean to make me to change the name of another, so if it please you to help me to change my own name, i can be but more and more bounden to you; and i am much deceived if your lordship find not the king well inclined, and my lord of salisbury forward and affectionate." to salisbury he writes: "i may say to your lordship, in the confidence of your poor kinsman, and of a man by you advanced, _tu idem fer opem, qui spem dedisti_; for i am sure it was not possible for any living man to have received from another more significant and comfortable words of hope; your lordship being pleased to tell me, during the course of my last service, that you would raise me; and that when you had resolved to raise a man, you were more careful of him than himself; and that what you had done for me in my marriage was a benefit to me, but of no use to your lordship.... and i know, and all the world knoweth, that your lordship is no dealer of holy water, but noble and real; and on my part i am of a sure ground that i have committed nothing that may deserve alteration. and therefore my hope is your lordship will finish a good work, and consider that time groweth precious with me, and that i am now _vergentibus annis_. and although i know your fortune is not to need an hundred such as i am, yet i shall be ever ready to give you my best and first fruits, and to supply (as much as in me lieth) worthiness by thankfulness." still the powers were deaf to his appeals; at any rate he had to be content with another promise. considering the ability which he had shown in parliament, the wisdom and zeal with which he had supported the government, and the important position which he held in the house of commons, the neglect of him is unintelligible, except on two suppositions: that the government, that is cecil, were afraid of anything but the mere routine of law, as represented by such men as hobart and doddridge; or that coke's hostility to him was unabated, and coke still too important to be offended. bacon returned to work when the parliament met, november, . the questions arising out of the union, the question of naturalisation, its grounds and limits, the position of scotchmen born _before_ or _since_ the king's accession, the _antenati_ and _postnati_, the question of a union of laws, with its consequences, were discussed with great keenness and much jealous feeling. on the question of naturalisation bacon took the liberal and larger view. the immediate union of laws he opposed as premature. he was a willing servant of the house, and the house readily made use of him. he reported the result of conferences, even when his own opinion was adverse to that of the house. and he reported the speeches of such persons as lord salisbury, probably throwing into them both form and matter of his own. at length, "silently, on the th of june," , he was appointed solicitor-general. he was then forty-seven. "it was also probably about this time," writes mr. spedding, "that bacon finally settled the plan of his '_great instauration_,' and began to call it by that name." chapter iv. bacon solicitor-general. the great thinker and idealist, the great seer of a world of knowledge to which the men of his own generation were blind, and which they could not, even with his help, imagine a possible one, had now won the first step in that long and toilsome ascent to success in life, in which for fourteen years he had been baffled. he had made himself, for good and for evil, a servant of the government of james i. he was prepared to discharge with zeal and care all his duties. he was prepared to perform all the services which that government might claim from its servants. he had sought, he had passionately pressed to be admitted within that circle in which the will of the king was the supreme law; after that, it would have been ruin to have withdrawn or resisted. but it does not appear that the thought or wish to resist or withdraw ever presented itself; he had thoroughly convinced himself that in doing what the king required he was doing the part of a good citizen, and a faithful servant of the state and commonwealth. the two lives, the two currents of purpose and effort, were still there. behind all the wrangle of the courts and the devising of questionable legal subtleties to support some unconstitutional encroachment, or to outflank the defence of some obnoxious prisoner, the high philosophical meditations still went on; the remembrance of their sweetness and grandeur wrung more than once from the jaded lawyer or the baffled counsellor the complaint, in words which had a great charm for him, _multum incola fuit anima mea_--"my soul hath long dwelt" where it would not be. but opinion and ambition and the immense convenience of being great and rich and powerful, and the supposed necessities of his condition, were too strong even for his longings to be the interpreter and the servant of nature. there is no trace of the faintest reluctance on his part to be the willing minister of a court of which not only the principal figure, but the arbiter and governing spirit, was to be george villiers, duke of buckingham. the first leisure that bacon had after he was appointed solicitor he used in a characteristic way. he sat down to make a minute stock-taking of his position and its circumstances. in the summer of he devoted a week of july to this survey of his life, its objects and its appliances; and he jotted down, day by day, through the week, from his present reflections, or he transcribed from former note-books, a series of notes in loose order, mostly very rough and not always intelligible, about everything that could now concern him. this curious and intimate record, which he called _commentarius solutus_, was discovered by mr. spedding, who not unnaturally had some misgivings about publishing so secret and so ambiguous a record of a man's most private confidences with himself. but there it was, and, as it was known, he no doubt decided wisely in publishing it as it stands; he has done his best to make it intelligible, and he has also done his best to remove any unfavourable impressions that might arise from it. it is singularly interesting as an evidence of bacon's way of working, of his watchfulness, his industry, his care in preparing himself long beforehand for possible occasions, his readiness to take any amount of trouble about his present duties, his self-reliant desire for more important and difficult ones. it exhibits his habit of self-observation and self-correction, his care to mend his natural defects of voice, manner, and delivery; it is even more curious in showing him watching his own physical constitution and health, in the most minute details of symptoms and remedies, equally with a scientific and a practical object. it contains his estimate of his income, his expenditure, his debts, schedules of lands and jewels, his rules for the economy of his estate, his plans for his new gardens and terraces and ponds and buildings at gorhambury. he was now a rich man, valuing his property at £ , and his income at £ , burdened with a considerable debt, but not more than he might easily look to wipe out. but, besides all these points, there appear the two large interests of his life--the reform of philosophy, and his ideal of a great national policy. the "greatness of britain" was one of his favourite subjects of meditation. he puts down in his notes the outline of what should be aimed at to secure and increase it; it is to make the various forces of the great and growing empire work together in harmonious order, without waste, without jealousy, without encroachment and collision; to unite not only the interests but the sympathies and aims of the crown with those of the people and parliament; and so to make britain, now in peril from nothing but from the strength of its own discordant elements, that "monarchy of the west" in reality, which spain was in show, and, as bacon always maintained, only in show. the survey of the condition of his philosophical enterprise takes more space. he notes the stages and points to which his plans have reached; he indicates, with a favourite quotation or apophthegm--"_plus ultra_"--"_ausus vana contemnere_"--"_aditus non nisi sub persona infantis_" soon to be familiar to the world in his published writings--the lines of argument, sometimes alternative ones, which were before him; he draws out schemes of inquiry, specimen tables, distinctions and classifications about the subject of motion, in english interlarded with latin, or in latin interlarded with english, of his characteristic and practical sort; he notes the various sources from which he might look for help and co-operation--"of learned men beyond the seas"--"to begin first in france to print it"--"laying for a place to command wits and pens;" he has his eye on rich and childless bishops, on the enforced idleness of state prisoners in the tower, like northumberland and raleigh, on the great schools and universities, where he might perhaps get hold of some college for "inventors"--as we should say, for the endowment of research. these matters fill up a large space of his notes. but his thoughts were also busy about his own advancement. and to these sheets of miscellaneous memoranda bacon confided not only his occupations and his philosophical and political ideas, but, with a curious innocent unreserve, the arts and methods which he proposed to use in order to win the favour of the great and to pull down the reputation of his rivals. he puts down in detail how he is to recommend himself to the king and the king's favourites-- "to set on foot and maintain access with his majesty, dean of the chapel, may, murray. keeping a course of access at the beginning of every term and vacation, with a memorial. to attend some time his repasts, or to fall into a course of familiar discourse. to find means to win a conceit, not open, but private, of being affectionate and assured to the scotch, and fit to succeed salisbury in his manage in that kind; lord dunbar, duke of lennox, and daubiny: secret." then, again, of salisbury-- "insinuate myself to become privy to my lord of salisbury's estate." "to correspond with salisbury in a habit of natural but no ways perilous boldness, and in vivacity, invention, care to cast and enterprise (but with due caution), for this manner i judge both in his nature freeth the stands, and in his ends pleaseth him best, and promiseth more use of me. i judge my standing out, and not favoured by northampton, must needs do me good with salisbury, especially comparative to the attorney." the attorney hobart filled the place to which bacon had so long aspired, and which he thought, perhaps reasonably, that he could fill much better. at any rate, one of the points to which he recurs frequently in his notes is to exhort himself to make his own service a continual contrast to the attorney's--"to have in mind and use the attorney's weakness," enumerating a list of instances: "too full of cases and distinctions. nibbling solemnly, he distinguisheth but apprehends not;" "no gift with his pen in proclamations and the like;" and at last he draws out in a series of epigrams his view of "hubbard's disadvantages"-- "better at shift than at drift.... _subtilitas sine acrimonia_.... no power with the judge.... he will alter a thing but not mend.... he puts into patents and deeds words not of law but of common sense and discourse.... sociable save in profit.... he doth depopulate mine office; otherwise called inclose.... i never knew any one of so good a speech with a worse pen." ... then in a marginal note--"solemn goose. stately, leastwise nodd (?) crafty. they have made him believe that he is wondrous wise." and, finally, he draws up a paper of counsels and rules for his own conduct--"_custumæ aptæ ad individuum_"--which might supply an outline for an essay on the arts of behaviour proper for a rising official, a sequel to the biting irony of the essays on _cunning_ and _wisdom for a man's self_. "to furnish my l. of s. with ornaments for public speeches. to make him think how he should be reverenced by a lord chancellor, if i were; princelike. "to prepare him for matters to be handled in council or before the king aforehand, and to show him and yield him the fruits of my care. "to take notes in tables, when i attend the council, and sometimes to move out of a memorial shewed and seen. to have particular occasions, fit and graceful and continual, to maintain private speech with every the great persons, and sometimes drawing more than one together. _ex imitatione att._ this specially in public places, and without care or affectation. at council table to make good my l. of salisb. motions and speeches, and for the rest sometimes one sometimes another; chiefly his, that is most earnest and in affection. "to suppress at once my speaking, with panting and labour of breath and voice. not to fall upon the main too sudden, but to induce and intermingle speech of good fashion. to use at once upon entrance given of speech, though abrupt, to compose and draw in myself. to free myself at once from payt. (?) of formality and compliment, though with some show of carelessness, pride, and rudeness." (and then follows a long list of matters of business to be attended to.) these arts of a court were not new; it was not new for men to observe them in their neighbours and rivals. what was new was the writing them down, with deliberate candour, among a man's private memoranda, as things to be done and with the intention of practising them. this of itself, it has been suggested, shows that they were unfamiliar and uncongenial to bacon; for a man reminds himself of what he is apt to forget. but a man reminds himself also of what seems to him, at the moment, most important, and what he lays most stress upon. and it is clear that these are the rules, rhetorical and ethical, which bacon laid down for himself in pursuing the second great object of his life--his official advancement; and that, whatever we think of them, they were the means which he deliberately approved. as long as salisbury lived, the distrust which had kept bacon so long in the shade kept him at a distance from the king's ear, and from influence on his counsels. salisbury was the one englishman in whom the king had become accustomed to confide, in his own conscious strangeness to english ways and real dislike and suspicion of them; salisbury had an authority which no one else had, both from his relations with james at the end of elizabeth's reign, and as the representative of her policy and the depositary of its traditions; and if he had lived, things might not, perhaps, have been better in james's government, but many things, probably, would have been different. but while salisbury was supreme, bacon, though very alert and zealous, was mainly busied with his official work; and the solicitor's place had become, as he says, a "mean thing" compared with the attorney's, and also an extremely laborious place--"one of the painfullest places in the kingdom." much of it was routine, but responsible and fatiguing routine. but if he was not in salisbury's confidence, he was prominent in the house of commons. the great and pressing subject of the time was the increasing difficulties of the revenue, created partly by the inevitable changes of a growing state, but much more by the king's incorrigible wastefulness. it was impossible to realise completely the great dream and longing of the stuart kings and their ministers to make the crown independent of parliamentary supplies; but to dispense with these supplies as much as possible, and to make as much as possible of the revenue permanent, was the continued and fatal policy of the court. the "great contract"--a scheme by which, in return for the surrender by the crown of certain burdensome and dangerous claims of the prerogative, the commons were to assure a large compensating yearly income to the crown--was salisbury's favourite device during the last two years of his life. it was not a prosperous one. the bargain was an ill-imagined and not very decorous transaction between the king and his people. both parties were naturally jealous of one another, suspicious of underhand dealing and tacit changes of terms, prompt to resent and take offence, and not easy to pacify when they thought advantage had been taken; and salisbury, either by his own fault, or by yielding to the king's canny shiftiness, gave the business a more haggling and huckstering look than it need have had. bacon, a subordinate of the government, but a very important person in the commons, did his part, loyally, as it seems, and skilfully in smoothing differences and keeping awkward questions from making their appearance. thus he tried to stave off the risk of bringing definitely to a point the king's cherished claim to levy "impositions," or custom duties, on merchandise, by virtue of his prerogative--a claim which he warned the commons not to dispute, and which bacon, maintaining it as legal in theory, did his best to prevent them from discussing, and to persuade them to be content with restraining. whatever he thought of the "great contract," he did what was expected of him in trying to gain for it fair play. but he made time for other things also. he advised, and advised soundly, on the plantation and finance of ireland. it was a subject in which he took deep interest. a few years later, with only too sure a foresight, he gave the warning, "lest ireland civil become more dangerous to us than ireland savage." he advised--not soundly in point of law, but curiously in accordance with modern notions--about endowments; though, in this instance, in the famous will case of thomas sutton, the founder of the charter house, his argument probably covered the scheme of a monstrous job in favour of the needy court. and his own work went on in spite of the pressure of the solicitor's place. to the first years of his official life belong three very interesting fragments, intended to find a provisional place in the plan of the "great instauration." to his friend toby matthews, at florence, he sent in manuscript the great attack on the old teachers of knowledge, which is perhaps the most brilliant, and also the most insolently unjust and unthinking piece of rhetoric ever composed by him--the _redargutio philosophiarum_. "i send you at this time the only part which hath any harshness; and yet i framed to myself an opinion, that whosoever allowed well of that preface which you so much commend, will not dislike, or at least ought not to dislike, this other speech of preparation; for it is written out of the same spirit, and out of the same necessity. nay it doth more fully lay open that the question between me and the ancients is not of the virtue of the race, but of the rightness of the way. and to speak truth, it is to the other but as _palma_ to _pugnus_, part of the same thing more large.... myself am like the miller of huntingdon, that was wont to pray for peace amongst the willows; for while the winds blew, the wind-mills wrought, and the water-mill was less customed. so i see that controversies of religion must hinder the advancement of sciences. let me conclude with my perpetual wish towards yourself, that the approbation of yourself by your own discreet and temperate carriage, may restore you to your country, and your friends to your society. and so i commend you to god's goodness. "gray's inn, this th of october, ." to bishop andrewes he sent, also in manuscript, another piece, belonging to the same plan--the deeply impressive treatise called _visa et cogitata_--what francis bacon had seen of nature and knowledge, and what he had come by meditation to think of what he had seen. the letter is not less interesting than the last, in respect to the writer's purposes, his manner of writing, and his relations to his correspondent. "my very good lord,--now your lordship hath been so long in the church and the palace disputing between kings and popes, methinks you should take pleasure to look into the field, and refresh your mind with some matter of philosophy, though that science be now through age waxed a child again, and left to boys and young men; and because you were wont to make me believe you took liking to my writings, i send you some of this vacation's fruits, and thus much more of my mind and purpose. i hasten not to publish; perishing i would prevent. and i am forced to respect as well my times as the matter. for with me it is thus, and i think with all men in my case, if i bind myself to an argument, it loadeth my mind; but if i rid my mind of the present cogitation, it is rather a recreation. this hath put me into these miscellanies, which i purpose to suppress, if god give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy, which i go on with, though slowly. i send not your lordship too much, lest it may glut you. now let me tell you what my desire is. if your lordship be so good now as when you were the good dean of westminster, my request to you is, that not by pricks, but by notes, you would mark unto me whatsoever shall seem unto you either not current in the style, or harsh to credit and opinion, or inconvenient for the person of the writer; for no man can be judge and party, and when our minds judge by reflection of ourselves, they are more subject to error. and though for the matter itself my judgement be in some things fixed, and not accessible by any man's judgement that goeth not my way, yet even in those things the admonition of a friend may make me express myself diversly. i would have come to your lordship, but that i am hastening to my house in the country. and so i commend your lordship to god's goodness." there was yet another production of this time, of which we have a notice from himself in a letter to toby matthews, the curious and ingenious little treatise on the _wisdom of the ancients_, "one of the most popular of his works," says mr. spedding, "in his own and in the next generation," but of value to us mainly for its quaint poetical colour, and the unexpected turns, like answers to a riddle, given to the ancient fables. when this work was published, it was the third time that he had appeared as an author in print. he thus writes about it and himself: "mr. matthews,--i do heartily thank you for your letter of the th of august from salamanca; and in recompense thereof i send you a little work of mine that hath begun to pass the world. they tell me my latin is turned into silver, and become current. had you been here, you should have been my inquisitor before it came forth; but i think the greatest inquisitor in spain will allow it.... my great work goeth forward, and, after my manner, i alter ever when i add. so that nothing is finished till all be finished. "from gray's inn, the th of february, ." in the autumn of the attorney-general was ill, and bacon reminded both the king and salisbury of his claim. he was afraid, he writes to the king, with an odd forgetfulness of the persistency and earnestness of his applications, "that _by reason of my slowness to sue_, and apprehend occasions upon the sudden, keeping one plain course of painful service, i may _in fine dierum_ be in danger to be neglected and forgotten." the attorney recovered, but bacon, on new year's tide of / , wrote to salisbury to thank him for his good-will. it is the last letter of bacon's to salisbury which has come down to us. "it may please your good lordship,--i would entreat the new year to answer for the old, in my humble thanks to your lordship, both for many your favours, and chiefly that upon the occasion of mr. attorney's infirmity i found your lordship even as i would wish. this doth increase a desire in me to express my thankful mind to your lordship; hoping that though i find age and decays grow upon me, yet i may have a flash or two of spirit left to do you service. and i do protest before god, without compliment or any light vein of mind, that if i knew in what course of life to do you best service, i would take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that center. but all this is no more than i am, which is not much, but yet the entire of him that is--" in the following may (may , ) salisbury died. from this date james passed from government by a minister, who, whatever may have been his faults, was laborious, public-spirited, and a statesman, into his own keeping and into the hands of favourites, who cared only for themselves. with cecil ceased the traditions of the days of elizabeth and burghley, in many ways evil and cruel traditions, but not ignoble and sordid ones; and james was left without the stay, and also without the check, which cecil's power had been to him. the field was open for new men and new ways; the fashions and ideas of the time had altered during the last ten years, and those of the queen's days had gone out of date. would the new turn out for the better or the worse? bacon, at any rate, saw the significance of the change and the critical eventfulness of the moment. it was his habit of old to send memorials of advice to the heads of the government, apparently without such suggestions seeming more intrusive or officious than a leading article seems now, and perhaps with much the same effect. it was now a time to do so, if ever; and he was in an official relation to the king which entitled him to proffer advice. he at once prepared to lay his thoughts before the king, and to suggest that he could do far better service than cecil, and was ready to take his place. the policy of the "great contract" had certainly broken down, and the king, under cecil's guidance, had certainly not known how to manage an english parliament. in writing to the king he found it hard to satisfy himself. several draft letters remain, and it is not certain which of them, if any, was sent. but immediately on salisbury's death he began, may th, a letter in which he said that he had never yet been able to show his affection to the king, "having been as a hawk tied to another's fist;" and if, "as was said to one that spake great words, _amice, verba tua desiderant civitatem_, your majesty say to me, _bacon, your words require a place to speak them_," yet that "place or not place" was with the king. but the draft breaks off abruptly, and with the date of the st we have the following: "your majesty hath lost a great subject and a great servant. but if i should praise him in propriety, i should say that he was a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better. for he loved to have the eyes of all israel a little too much upon himself, and to have all business still under the hammer, and like clay in the hands of the potter, to mould it as he thought good; so that he was more _in operatione_ than _in opere_. and though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on. so that although your majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy persons left, yet you do as it were turn a leaf, wherein if your majesty shall give a frame and constitution to matters, before you place the persons, in my simple opinion it were not amiss. but the great matter and most instant for the present, is the consideration of a parliament, for two effects: the one for the supply of your estate, the other for the better knitting of the hearts of your subjects unto your majesty, according to your infinite merit; for both which, parliaments have been and are the antient and honourable remedy. "now because i take myself to have a little skill in that region, as one that ever affected that your majesty mought in all your causes not only prevail, but prevail with satisfaction of the inner man; and though no man can say but i was a perfect and peremptory royalist, yet every man makes me believe that i was never one hour out of credit with the lower house; my desire is to know whether your majesty will give me leave to meditate and propound unto you some preparative remembrances touching the future parliament." whether he sent this or not, he prepared another draft. what had happened in the mean while we know not, but bacon was in a bitter mood, and the letter reveals, for the first time, what was really in bacon's heart about the "great subject and great servant," of whom he had just written so respectfully, and with whom he had been so closely connected for most of his life. the fierceness which had been gathering for years of neglect and hindrance under that placid and patient exterior broke out. he offered himself as cecil's successor in business of state. he gave his reason for being hopeful of success. cecil's bitterest enemy could not have given it more bitterly. "my principal end being to do your majesty service, i crave leave to make at this time to your majesty this most humble oblation of myself. i may truly say with the psalm, _multum incola fuit anima mea_, for my life hath been conversant in things wherein i take little pleasure. your majesty may have heard somewhat that my father was an honest man, and somewhat you may have seen of myself, though not to make any true judgement by, because i have hitherto had only _potestatem verborum_, nor that neither. i was three of my young years bred with an ambassador in france, and since i have been an old truant in the school-house of your council-chamber, though on the second form, yet longer than any that now sitteth hath been upon the head form. if your majesty find any aptness in me, or if you find any scarcity in others, whereby you may think it fit for your service to remove me to business of state, although i have a fair way before me for profit (and by your majesty's grace and favour for honour and advancement), and in a course less exposed to the blasts of fortune, _yet now that he is gone, quo vivente virtutibus certissimum exitium_, i will be ready as a chessman to be wherever your majesty's royal hand shall set me. your majesty will bear me witness, i have not suddenly opened myself thus far. i have looked upon others, i see the exceptions, i see the distractions, and i fear tacitus will be a prophet, _magis alii homines quam alii mores_. i know mine own heart, and i know not whether god that hath touched my heart with the affection may not touch your royal heart to discern it. howsoever, i shall at least go on honestly in mine ordinary course, and supply the rest in prayers for you, remaining, etc." this is no hasty outburst. in a later paper on the true way of retrieving the disorders of the king's finances, full of large and wise counsel, after advising the king not to be impatient, and assuring him that a state of debt is not so intolerable--"for it is no new thing for the greatest kings to be in debt," and all the great men of the court had been in debt without any "manner of diminution of their greatness"--he returns to the charge in detail against salisbury and the great contract. "my second prayer is, that your majesty--in respect to the hasty freeing of your state--would not descend to any means, or degree of means, which carrieth not a symmetry with your majesty and greatness. _he is gone from whom those courses did wholly flow._ to have your wants and necessities in particular as it were hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your lords and commons, to be talked of for four months together; to have all your courses to help yourself in revenue or profit put into printed books, which were wont to be held _arcana imperii_; to have such worms of aldermen to lend for ten in the hundred upon good assurance, and with such entreaty (?) as if it should save the bark of your fortune; to contract still where mought be had the readiest payment, and not the best bargain; to stir a number of projects for your profit, and then to blast them, and leave your majesty nothing but the scandal of them; to pretend even carriage between your majesty's rights and ease of the people, and to satisfy neither. these courses and others the like i hope are gone with the deviser of them; which have turned your majesty to inestimable prejudice." and what he thought of saying, but on further consideration struck out, was the following. it is no wonder that he struck it out, but it shows what he felt towards cecil. "i protest to god, though i be not superstitious, when i saw your m.'s book against vorstius and arminius, and noted your zeal to deliver the majesty of god from the vain and indign comprehensions of heresy and degenerate philosophy, as you had by your pen formerly endeavoured to deliver kings from the usurpation of rome, _perculsit illico animum_ that god would set shortly upon you some visible favour, _and let me not live if i thought not of the taking away of that man_." and from this time onwards he scarcely ever mentions cecil's name in his correspondence with james but with words of condemnation, which imply that cecil's mischievous policy was the result of private ends. yet this was the man to whom he had written the "new year's tide" letter six months before; a letter which is but an echo to the last of all that he had been accustomed to write to cecil when asking assistance or offering congratulation. cecil had, indeed, little claim on bacon's gratitude; he had spoken him fair in public, and no doubt in secret distrusted and thwarted him. but to the last bacon did not choose to acknowledge this. had james disclosed something of his dead servant, who left some strange secrets behind him, which showed his unsuspected hostility to bacon? except on this supposition (but there is nothing to support it), no exaggeration of the liberty allowed to the language of compliment is enough to clear bacon of an insincerity which is almost inconceivable in any but the meanest tools of power. "i assure myself," wrote bacon to the king, "your majesty taketh not me for one of a busy nature; for my estate being free from all difficulties, and i having such a large field for contemplation, as i have partly and shall much more make manifest unto your majesty and the world, to occupy my thoughts, nothing could make me active but love and affection." so bacon described his position with questionable accuracy--for his estate was not "free from difficulties"--in the new time coming. he was still kept out of the inner circle of the council; but from the moment of salisbury's death he became a much more important person. he still sued for advancement, and still met with disappointment; the "mean men" still rose above him. the lucrative place of master of the wards was vacated by salisbury's death. bacon was talked of for it, and probably expected it, for he drew up new rules for it, and a speech for the new master; but the office and the speech went to sir george carey. soon after sir george carey died. bacon then applied for it through the new favourite, rochester. "he was so confident of the place that he put most of his men into new cloaks;" and the world of the day amused itself at his disappointment, when the place was given to another "mean man," sir walter cope, of whom the gossips wrote that if the "last two treasurers could look out of their graves to see those successors in that place, they would be out of countenance with themselves, and say to the world _quantum mutatus_." but bacon's hand and counsel appear more and more in important matters--the improvement of the revenue; the defence of extreme rights of the prerogative in the case against whitelocke; the great question of calling a parliament, and of the true and "princely" way of dealing with it. his confidential advice to the king about calling a parliament was marked by his keen perception of the facts of the situation; it was marked too by his confident reliance on skilful indirect methods and trust in the look of things; it bears traces also of his bitter feeling against salisbury, whom he charges with treacherously fomenting the opposition of the last parliament. there was no want of worldly wisdom in it; certainly it was more adapted to james's ideas of state-craft than the simpler plan of sir henry nevill, that the king should throw himself frankly on the loyalty and good-will of parliament. and thus he came to be on easy terms with james, who was quite capable of understanding bacon's resource and nimbleness of wit. in the autumn of the chief-justiceship of the king's bench became vacant. bacon at once gave the king reasons for sending coke from the common pleas--where he was a check on the prerogative--to the king's bench, where he could do less harm; while hobart went to the common pleas. the promotion was obvious, but the common pleas suited coke better, and the place was more lucrative. bacon's advice was followed. coke, very reluctantly, knowing well who had given it, and why, "not only weeping himself but followed by the tears" of all the court of common pleas, moved up to the higher post. the attorney hobart succeeded, and bacon at last became attorney (october , ). in chamberlain's gossip we have an indication, such as occurs only accidentally, of the view of outsiders: "there is a strong apprehension that little good is to be expected by this change, and that bacon may prove a dangerous instrument." chapter v. bacon attorney-general and chancellor. thus, at last, at the age of fifty-two, bacon had gained the place which essex had tried to get for him at thirty-two. the time of waiting had been a weary one, and it is impossible not to see that it had been hurtful to bacon. a strong and able man, very eager to have a field for his strength and ability, who is kept out of it, as he thinks unfairly, and is driven to an attitude of suppliant dependency in pressing his claim on great persons who amuse him with words, can hardly help suffering in the humiliating process. it does a man no good to learn to beg, and to have a long training in the art. and further, this long delay kept up the distraction of his mind between the noble work on which his soul was bent, and the necessities of that "civil" or professional and political life by which he had to maintain his estate. all the time that he was "canvassing" (it is his own word) for office, and giving up his time and thoughts to the work which it involved, the great _instauration_ had to wait his hours of leisure; and his exclamation, so often repeated, _multum incola fuit anima mea_, bears witness to the longings that haunted him in his hours of legal drudgery, or in the service of his not very thankful employers. not but that he found compensation in the interest of public questions, in the company of the great, in the excitement of state-craft and state employment, in the pomp and enjoyment of court life. he found too much compensation; it was one of his misfortunes. but his heart was always sound in its allegiance to knowledge; and if he had been fortunate enough to have risen earlier to the greatness which he aimed at as a vantage-ground for his true work, or if he had had self-control to have dispensed with wealth and position--if he had escaped the long necessity of being a persistent and still baffled suitor--we might have had as a completed whole what we have now only in great fragments, and we should have been spared the blots which mar a career which ought to have been a noble one. the first important matter that happened after bacon's new appointment was the essex divorce case, and the marriage of lady essex with the favourite whom cecil's death had left at the height of power, and who from lord rochester was now made earl of somerset. with the divorce, the beginning of the scandals and tragedies of james's reign, bacon had nothing to do. at the marriage which followed bacon presented as his offering a masque, performed by the members of gray's inn, of which he bore the charges, and which cost him the enormous sum of £ . whether it were to repay his obligations to the howards, or in lieu of a "fee" to rochester, who levied toll on all favours from the king, it can hardly be said, as has been suggested, to be a protest against the great abuse of the times, the sale of offices for money. the "very splendid trifle, the masque of flowers," was one form of the many extravagant tributes paid but too willingly to high-handed worthlessness, of which the deeper and darker guilt was to fill all faces with shame two years afterwards. as attorney, bacon had to take a much more prominent part in affairs, legal, criminal, constitutional, administrative, than he had yet been allowed to have. we know that it was his great object to show how much more active and useful an attorney he could be than either coke or hobart; and as far as unflagging energy and high ability could make a good public servant, he fully carried out his purpose. in parliament, the "addled parliament" of , in which he sat for the university of cambridge, he did his best to reconcile what were fast becoming irreconcilable, the claims and prerogatives of an absolute king, irritable, suspicious, exacting, prodigal, with the ancient rights and liberties, growing stronger in their demands by being denied, resisted, or outwitted, of the popular element in the state. in the trials, which are so large and disagreeable a part of the history of these years--trials arising out of violent words provoked by the violent acts of power, one of which, peacham's, became famous, because in the course of it torture was resorted to, or trials which witnessed to the corruption of the high society of the day, like the astounding series of arraignments and condemnations following on the discoveries relating to overbury's murder, which had happened just before the somerset marriage--bacon had to make the best that he could for the cruel and often unequal policy of the court; and bacon must take his share in the responsibility for it. an effort on james's part to stop duelling brought from bacon a worthier piece of service, in the shape of an earnest and elaborate argument against it, full of good sense and good feeling, but hopelessly in advance of the time. on the many questions which touched the prerogative, james found in his attorney a ready and skilful advocate of his claims, who knew no limit to them but in the consideration of what was safe and prudent to assert. he was a better and more statesmanlike counsellor, in his unceasing endeavours to reconcile james to the expediency of establishing solid and good relations with his parliament, and in his advice as to the wise and hopeful ways of dealing with it. bacon had no sympathy with popular wants and claims; of popularity, of all that was called popular, he had the deepest suspicion and dislike; the opinions and the judgment of average men he despised, as a thinker, a politician, and a courtier; the "malignity of the people" he thought great. "i do not love," he says, "the word _people_." but he had a high idea of what was worthy of a king, and was due to the public interests, and he saw the folly of the petty acts and haughty words, the use of which james could not resist. in his new office he once more urged on, and urged in vain, his favourite project for revising, simplifying, and codifying the law. this was a project which would find little favour with coke, and the crowd of lawyers who venerated him--men whom bacon viewed with mingled contempt and apprehension both in the courts and in parliament where they were numerous, and whom he more than once advised the king to bridle and keep "in awe." bacon presented his scheme to the king in a proposition, or, as we should call it, a report. it is very able and interesting; marked with his characteristic comprehensiveness and sense of practical needs, and with a confidence in his own knowledge of law which contrasts curiously with the current opinion about it. he speaks with the utmost honour of coke's work, but he is not afraid of a comparison with him. "i do assure your majesty," he says, "i am in good hope that when sir edward coke's reports and my rules and decisions shall come to posterity, there will be (whatever is now thought) question who was the greater lawyer." but the project, though it was entertained and discussed in parliament, came to nothing. no one really cared about it except bacon. but in these years ( and ) two things happened of the utmost consequence to him. one was the rise, more extravagant than anything that england had seen for centuries, and in the end more fatal, of the new favourite, who from plain george villiers became the all-powerful duke of buckingham. bacon, like the rest of the world, saw the necessity of bowing before him; and bacon persuaded himself that villiers was pre-eminently endowed with all the gifts and virtues which a man in his place would need. we have a series of his letters to villiers; they are of course in the complimentary vein which was expected; but if their language is only compliment, there is no language left for expressing what a man wishes to be taken for truth. the other matter was the humiliation, by bacon's means and in his presence, of his old rival coke. in the dispute about jurisdiction, always slumbering and lately awakened and aggravated by coke, between the common law courts and the chancery, coke had threatened the chancery with præmunire. the king's jealousy took alarm, and the chief-justice was called before the council. there a decree, based on bacon's advice and probably drawn up by him, peremptorily overruled the legal doctrine maintained by the greatest and most self-confident judge whom the english courts had seen. the chief-justice had to acquiesce in this reading of the law; and then, as if such an affront were not enough, coke was suspended from his office, and, further, enjoined to review and amend his published reports, where they were inconsistent with the view of law which on bacon's authority the star chamber had adopted (june, ). this he affected to do, but the corrections were manifestly only colourable; his explanations of his legal heresies against the prerogative, as these heresies were formulated by the chancellor and bacon, and presented to him for recantation, were judged insufficient; and in a decree, prefaced by reasons drawn up by bacon, in which, besides coke's errors of law, his "deceit, contempt, and slander of the government," his "perpetual turbulent carriage," and his affectation of popularity, were noted--he was removed from his office (nov., ). so, for the present, the old rivalry had ended in a triumph for bacon. bacon, whom coke had so long headed in the race, whom he had sneered at as a superficial pretender to law, and whose accomplishments and enthusiasm for knowledge he utterly despised, had not only defeated him, but driven him from his seat with dishonour. when we remember what coke was, what he had thought of bacon, and how he prized his own unique reputation as a representative of english law, the effects of such a disgrace on a man of his temper cannot easily be exaggerated. but for the present bacon had broken through the spell which had so long kept him back. he won a great deal of the king's confidence, and the king was more and more ready to make use of him, though by no means equally willing to think that bacon knew better than himself. bacon's view of the law, and his resources of argument and expression to make it good, could be depended upon in the keen struggle to secure and enlarge the prerogative which was now beginning. in the prerogative both james and bacon saw the safety of the state and the only reasonable hope of good government; but in bacon's larger and more elevated views of policy--of a policy worthy of a great king, and a king of england--james was not likely to take much interest. the memorials which it was bacon's habit to present on public affairs were wasted on one who had so little to learn from others--so he thought and so all assured him--about the secrets of empire. still they were proofs of bacon's ready mind; and james, even when he disagreed with bacon's opinion and arguments, was too clever not to see their difference from the work of other men. bacon rose in favour; and from the first he was on the best of terms with villiers. he professed to villiers the most sincere devotion. according to his custom he presented him with a letter of wise advice on the duties and behaviour of a favourite. he at once began, and kept up with him to the end, a confidential correspondence on matters of public importance. he made it clear that he depended upon villiers for his own personal prospects, and it had now become the most natural thing that bacon should look forward to succeeding the lord chancellor, ellesmere, who was fast failing. bacon had already (feb. , / ). in terms which seem strange to us, but were less strange then, set forth in a letter to the king the reasons why he should be chancellor; criticising justly enough, only that he was a party interested, the qualifications of other possible candidates, coke, hobart, and the archbishop abbott. coke would be "an overruling nature in an overruling place," and "popular men were no sure mounters for your majesty's saddle." hobart was incompetent. as to abbott, the chancellor's place required "a whole man," and to have both jurisdiction, spiritual and temporal, "was fit only for a king." the promise that bacon should have the place came to him three days afterwards through villiers. he acknowledged it in a burst of gratitude (feb. , / ). "i will now wholly rely on your excellent and happy self.... i am yours surer to you than my own life. for, as they speak of the turquoise stone in a ring, i will break into twenty pieces before you bear the least fall." they were unconsciously prophetic words. but ellesmere lasted longer than was expected. it was not till a year after this promise that he resigned. on the th of march, / , bacon received the seals. he expresses his obligations to villiers, now lord buckingham, in the following letter: "my dearest lord,--it is both in cares and kindness that small ones float up to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with silence. therefore i could speak little to your lordship to-day, neither had i fit time; but i must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. and i shall count every day lost, wherein i shall not either study your well-doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. good my lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living, "march , (_i.e._ / ). fr. bacon, c.s." he himself believed the appointment to be a popular one. "i know i am come in," he writes to the king soon after, "with as strong an envy of some particulars as with the love of the general." on the th of may, , he took his seat in chancery with unusual pomp and magnificence, and set forth, in an opening speech, with all his dignity and force, the duties of his great office and his sense of their obligation. but there was a curious hesitation in treating him as other men were treated in like cases. he was only "lord keeper." it was not till the following january ( / ) that he received the office of lord chancellor. it was not till half a year afterwards that he was made a peer. then he became baron verulam (july, ), and in january, / , viscount st. alban's. from this time bacon must be thought of, first and foremost, as a judge in the great seat which he had so earnestly sought. it was the place not merely of law, which often tied the judge's hands painfully, but of true justice, when law failed to give it. bacon's ideas of the duties of a judge were clear and strong, as he showed in various admirable speeches and charges: his duties as regards his own conduct and reputation; his duties in keeping his subordinates free from the taint of corruption. he was not ignorant of the subtle and unacknowledged ways in which unlawful gains may be covered by custom, and an abuse goes on because men will not choose to look at it. he entered on his office with the full purpose of doing its work better than it had ever been done. he saw where it wanted reforming, and set himself at once to reform. the accumulation and delay of suits had become grievous; at once he threw his whole energy into the task of wiping out the arrears which the bad health of his predecessor and the traditional sluggishness of the court had heaped up. in exactly three months from his appointment he was able to report that these arrears had been cleared off. "this day" (june , ), he writes to buckingham, "i have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice. not one cause unheard. the lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make. not one petition unheard. and this i think could not be said in our time before." the performance was splendid, and there is no reason to think that the work so rapidly done was not well done. we are assured that bacon's decisions were unquestioned, and were not complained of. at the same time, before this allegation is accepted as conclusive proof of the public satisfaction, it must be remembered that the question of his administration of justice, which was at last to assume such strange proportions, has never been so thoroughly sifted as, to enable us to pronounce upon it, it should be. the natural tendency of bacon's mind would undoubtedly be to judge rightly and justly; but the negative argument of the silence at the time of complainants, in days when it was so dangerous to question authority, and when we have so little evidence of what men said at their firesides, is not enough to show that he never failed. but the serious thing is that bacon subjected himself to two of the most dangerous influences which can act on the mind of a judge--the influence of the most powerful and most formidable man in england, and the influence of presents, in money and other gifts. from first to last he allowed buckingham, whom no man, as bacon soon found, could displease except at his own peril, to write letters to him on behalf of suitors whose causes were before him; and he allowed suitors, not often while the cause was pending, but sometimes even then, to send him directly, or through his servants, large sums of money. both these things are explained. it would have been characteristic of bacon to be confident that he could defy temptation: these habits were the fashion of the time, and everybody took them for granted; buckingham never asked his good offices beyond what bacon thought just and right, and asked them rather for the sake of expedition than to influence his judgment. and as to the money presents--every office was underpaid; this was the common way of acknowledging pains and trouble: it was analogous to a doctor's or a lawyer's fee now. and there is no proof that either influence ever led bacon to do wrong. this has been said, and said with some degree of force. but if it shows that bacon was not in this matter below his age, it shows that he was not above it. no one knew better than bacon that there were no more certain dangers to honesty and justice than the interference and solicitation of the great, and the old famous pest of bribes, of which all histories and laws were full. and yet on the highest seat of justice in the realm he, the great reformer of its abuses, allowed them to make their customary haunt. he did not mean to do wrong: his conscience was clear; he had not given thought to the mischief they must do, sooner or later, to all concerned with the court of chancery. with a magnificent carelessness he could afford to run safely a course closely bordering on crime, in which meaner men would sin and be ruined. before six months were over bacon found on what terms he must stand with buckingham. by a strange fatality, quite unintentionally, he became dragged into the thick of the scandalous and grotesque dissensions of the coke family. the court was away from london in the north; and coke had been trying, not without hope of success, to recover the king's favour. coke was a rich man, and lady compton, the mother of the villiers, thought that coke's daughter would be a good match for one of her younger sons. it was really a great chance for coke; but he haggled about the portion; and the opportunity, which might perhaps have led to his taking bacon's place, passed. but he found himself in trouble in other ways; his friends, especially secretary winwood, contrived to bring the matter on again, and he consented to the villiers's terms. but his wife, the young lady's mother, lady hatton, would not hear of it, and a furious quarrel followed. she carried off her daughter into the country. coke, with a warrant from secretary winwood, which bacon had refused to give him, pursued her: "with his son, 'fighting clem,' and ten or eleven servants, weaponed, in a violent manner he repaired to the house where she was remaining, and with a piece of timber or form broke open the door and dragged her along to his coach." lady hatton rushed off the same afternoon for help to bacon. after an overturn by the way, "at last to my lord keeper's they come, but could not have instant access to him, for that his people told them he was laid at rest, being not well. then my la. hatton desired she might be in the next room where my lord lay, that she might be the first that [should] speak with him after he was stirring. the door-keeper fulfilled her desire, and in the meantime gave her a chair to rest herself in, and there left her alone; but not long after, she rose up and bounced against my lord keeper's door, and waked him and affrighted him, that he called his men to him; and they opening the door, she thrust in with them, and desired his lp. to pardon her boldness, but she was like a cow that had lost her calf, and so justified [herself] and pacified my lord's anger, and got his warrant and my lo. treasurer's warrant and others of the council to fetch her daughter from the father and bring them both to the council." it was a chance that the late chief-justice and his wife, with their armed parties, did not meet on the road, in which case "there were like to be strange tragedies." at length the council compelled both sides to keep the peace, and the young lady was taken for the present out of the hands of her raging parents. bacon had assumed that the affair was the result of an intrigue between winwood and coke, and that the court would take part against coke, a man so deep in disgrace and so outrageously violent. supposing that he had the ear of buckingham, he wrote earnestly, persuading him to put an end to the business; and in the meantime the council ordered coke to be brought before the star chamber "for riot and force," to "be heard and sentenced as justice shall appertain." they had not the slightest doubt that they were doing what would please the king. a few days after they met, and then they learned the truth. "coke and his friends," writes chamberlain, "complain of hard measure from some of the greatest at that board, and that he was too much trampled upon with ill language. and our friend [_i.e._ winwood] passed out scot free for the warrant, which the greatest [_word illegible_] there said was subject to a _præmunire_; and withal told the lady compton that they wished well to her and her sons, and would be ready to serve the earl of buckingham with all true affection, whereas others did it out of faction and ambition--which words glancing directly at our good friend (winwood), he was driven to make his apology, and to show how it was put upon him from time to time by the queen and other parties; and, for conclusion, showed a letter of approbation of all his courses from the king, making the whole table judge what faction and ambition appeared in this carriage. _ad quod non fuit responsum._" none indeed, but blank faces, and thoughts of what might come next. the council, and bacon foremost, had made a desperate mistake. "it is evident," as mr. spedding says, "that he had not divined buckingham's feelings on the subject." he was now to learn them. to his utter amazement and alarm he found that the king was strong for the match, and that the proceeding of the council was condemned at court as gross misconduct. in vain he protested that he was quite willing to forward the match; that in fact he had helped it. bacon's explanations, and his warnings against coke the king "rejected with some disdain;" he justified coke's action; he charged bacon with disrespect and ingratitude to buckingham; he put aside his arguments and apologies as worthless or insincere. such reprimands had not often been addressed, even to inferior servants. bacon's letters to buckingham remained at first without notice; when buckingham answered he did so with scornful and menacing curtness. meanwhile bacon heard from yelverton how things were going at court. "sir e. coke," he wrote, "hath not forborne by any engine to heave at both your honour and myself, and he works the weightiest instrument, the earl of buckingham, who, as i see, sets him as close to him as his shirt, the earl speaking in sir edward's phrase, and as it were menacing in his spirit." buckingham, he went on to say, "did nobly and plainly tell me he would not secretly bite, but whosoever had had any interest, or tasted of the opposition to his brother's marriage, he would as openly oppose them to their faces, and they should discern what favour he had by the power he would use." the court, like a pack of dogs, had set upon bacon. "it is too common in every man's mouth in court that your greatness shall be abated, and as your tongue hath been as a razor unto some, so shall theirs be to you." buckingham said to every one that bacon had been forgetful of his kindness and unfaithful to him: "not forbearing in open speech to tax you, as if it were an inveterate custom with you, to be unfaithful unto him, as you were to the earls of essex and somerset." all this while bacon had been clearly in the right. he had thrust himself into no business that did not concern him. he had not, as buckingham accuses him of having done, "overtroubled" himself with the marriage. he had done his simple duty as a friend, as a councillor, as a judge. he had been honestly zealous for the villiers's honour, and warned buckingham of things that were beyond question. he had curbed coke's scandalous violence, perhaps with no great regret, but with manifest reason. but for this he was now on the very edge of losing his office; it was clear to him, as it is clear to us, that nothing could save him but absolute submission. he accepted the condition. how this submission was made and received, and with what gratitude he found that he was forgiven, may be seen in the two following letters. buckingham thus extends his grace to the lord keeper, and exhorts him to better behaviour: "but his majesty's direction in answer of your letter hath given me occasion to join hereunto a discovery unto you of mine inward thoughts, proceeding upon the discourse you had with me this day. for i do freely confess that your offer of submission unto me, and in writing (if so i would have it), battered so the unkindness that i had conceived in my heart for your behaviour towards me in my absence, as out of the sparks of my old affection towards you i went to sound his majesty's intention how he means to behave himself towards you, specially in any public meeting; where i found on the one part his majesty so little satisfied with your late answer unto him, which he counted (for i protest i use his own terms) _confused and childish_, and his vigorous resolution on the other part so fixed, that he would put some public exemplary mark upon you, as i protest the sight of his deep-conceived indignation quenched my passion, making me upon the instant change from the person of a party into a peace-maker; so as i was forced upon my knees to beg of his majesty that he would put no public act of disgrace upon you, and, as i dare say, no other person would have been patiently heard in this suit by his majesty but myself, so did i (though not without difficulty) obtain thus much--that he would not so far disable you from the merit of your future service as to put any particular mark of disgrace upon your person. only thus far his majesty protesteth, that upon the conscience of his office he cannot omit (though laying aside all passion) to give a kingly reprimand at his first sitting in council to so many of his councillors as were then here behind, and were actors in this business, for their ill behaviour in it. some of the particular errors committed in this business he will name, but without accusing any particular persons by name. "thus your lordship seeth the fruits of my natural inclination; and i protest all this time past it was no small grief unto me to hear the mouth of so many upon this occasion open to load you with innumerable malicious and detracting speeches, as if no music were more pleasing to my ears than to rail of you, which made me rather regret the ill nature of mankind, that like dogs love to set upon him that they see once snatched at. and to conclude, my lord, you have hereby a fair occasion so to make good hereafter your reputation by your sincere service to his majesty, as also by your firm and constant kindness to your friends, as i may (your lordship's old friend) participate of the comfort and honour that will thereby come to you. thus i rest at last "your lordship's faithful friend and servant, "g.b." "my ever best lord, now better than yourself,--your lordship's pen, or rather pencil, hath pourtrayed towards me such magnanimity and nobleness and true kindness, as methinketh i see the image of some ancient virtue, and not anything of these times. it is the line of my life, and not the lines of my letter, that must express my thankfulness; wherein if i fail, then god fail me, and make me as miserable as i think myself at this time happy by this reviver, through his majesty's singular clemency, and your incomparable love and favour. god preserve you, prosper you, and reward you for your kindness to "your raised and infinitely obliged friend and servant, "sept. , . fr. bacon, c.s." thus he had tried his strength with buckingham. he had found that this, "a little parent-like" manner of advising him, and the doctrine that a true friend "ought rather to go against his mind than his good," was not what buckingham expected from him. and he never ventured on it again. it is not too much to say that a man who could write as he now did to buckingham, could not trust himself in any matter in which buckingham, was interested. but the reconciliation was complete, and bacon took his place more and more as one of the chief persons in the government. james claimed so much to have his own way, and had so little scruple in putting aside, in his superior wisdom, sometimes very curtly, bacon's or any other person's recommendations, that though his services were great, and were not unrecognised, he never had the power and influence in affairs to which his boundless devotion to the crown, his grasp of business, and his willing industry, ought to have entitled him. he was still a servant, and made to feel it, though a servant in the "first form." it was james and buckingham who determined the policy of the country, or settled the course to be taken in particular transactions; when this was settled, it was bacon's business to carry it through successfully. in this he was like all the other servants of the crown, and like them he was satisfied with giving his advice, whether it were taken or not; but unlike many of them he was zealous in executing with the utmost vigour and skill the instructions which were given him. thus he was required to find the legal means for punishing raleigh; and, as a matter of duty, he found them. he was required to tell the government side of the story of raleigh's crimes and punishment--which really was one side of the story, only not by any means the whole; and he told it, as he had told the government story against essex, with force, moderation, and good sense. himself, he never would have made james's miserable blunders about raleigh; but the blunders being made, it was his business to do his best to help the king out of them. when suffolk, the lord treasurer, was disgraced and brought before the star chamber for corruption and embezzlement in his office, bacon thought that he was doing no more than his duty in keeping buckingham informed day by day how the trial was going on; how he had taken care that suffolk's submission should not stop it--"for all would be but a play on the stage if justice went not on in the right course;" how he had taken care that the evidence went well--"i will not say i sometime holp it, as far as was fit for a judge;" how, "a little to warm the business" ... "i spake a word, that he that did draw or milk treasure from ireland, did not, _emulgere_, milk money, but blood." this, and other "little things" like it, while he was sitting as a judge to try, if the word may be used, a personal enemy of buckingham, however bad the case might be against suffolk, sound strange indeed to us; and not less so when, in reporting the sentence and the various opinions of the council about it, he, for once, praises coke for the extravagance of his severity: "sir edward coke did his part--i have not heard him do better--and began with a fine of £ , ; but the judges first, and most of the rest, reduced it to £ , . i do not dislike that thing passed moderately; and all things considered, it is not amiss, and might easily have been worse." in all this, which would have been perfectly natural from an attorney-general of the time, bacon saw but his duty, even as a judge between the crown and the subject. it was what was expected of those whom the king chose to employ, and whom buckingham chose to favour. but a worse and more cruel case, illustrating the system which a man like bacon could think reasonable and honourable, was the disgrace and punishment of yelverton, the attorney-general, the man who had stood by bacon, and in his defence had faced buckingham, knowing well buckingham's dislike of himself, when all the court turned against bacon in his quarrel with coke and lady compton. towards the end of the year , on the eve of a probable meeting of parliament, there was great questioning about what was to be done about certain patents and monopolies--monopolies for making gold and silk thread, and for licensing inns and ale-houses--which were in the hands of buckingham's brothers and their agents. the monopolies were very unpopular; there was always doubt as to their legality; they were enforced oppressively and vexatiously by men like michell and mompesson, who acted for the villiers; and the profits of them went, for the most part, not into the exchequer, but into the pockets of the hangers-on of buckingham. bacon defended them both in law and policy, and his defence is thought by mr. gardiner to be not without grounds; but he saw the danger of obstinacy in maintaining what had become so hateful in the country, and strongly recommended that the more indefensible and unpopular patents should be spontaneously given up, the more so as they were of "no great fruit." but buckingham's insolent perversity "refused to be convinced." the council, when the question was before them, decided to maintain them. bacon, who had rightly voted in the minority, thus explains his own vote to buckingham: "the king did wisely put it upon and consult, whether the patents were at this time to be removed by act of council before parliament. _i opined (but yet somewhat like ovid's mistress, that strove, but yet as one that would be overcome), that yes!_" but in the various disputes which had arisen about them, yelverton had shown that he very much disliked the business of defending monopolies, and sending london citizens to jail for infringing them. he did it, but he did it grudgingly. it was a great offence in a man whom buckingham had always disliked; and it is impossible to doubt that what followed was the consequence of his displeasure. "in drawing up a new charter for the city of london," writes mr. gardiner, "yelverton inserted clauses for which he was unable to produce a warrant. the worst that could be said was that he had, through inadvertence, misunderstood the verbal directions of the king. although no imputation of corruption was brought against him, yet he was suspended from his office, and prosecuted in the star chamber. he was then sentenced to dismissal from his post, to a fine of £ , and to imprisonment during the royal pleasure." in the management of this business bacon had the chief part. yelverton, on his suspension, at once submitted. the obnoxious clauses are not said to have been of serious importance, but they were new clauses which the king had not sanctioned, and it would be a bad precedent to pass over such unauthorised additions even by an attorney-general. "i mistook many things," said yelverton afterwards, in words which come back into our minds at a later period, "i was improvident in some things, and too credulous in all things." it might have seemed that dismissal, if not a severe reprimand, was punishment enough. but the submission was not enough, in bacon's opinion, "for the king's honour." he dwelt on the greatness of the offence, and the necessity of making a severe example. according to his advice, yelverton was prosecuted in the star chamber. it was not merely a mistake of judgment. "herein," said bacon, "i note the wisdom of the law of england, which termeth the highest contempt and excesses of authority _misprisions_; which (if you take the sound and derivation of the word) is but _mistaken_; but if you take the use and acception of the word, it is high and heinous contempt and usurpation of authority; whereof the reason i take to be and the name excellently imposed, for that main mistaking, it is ever joined with contempt; for he that reveres will not easily mistake; but he that slights, and thinks more of the greatness of his place than of the duty of his place, will soon commit misprisions." the day would come when this doctrine would be pressed with ruinous effect against bacon himself. but now he expounded with admirable clearness the wrongness of carelessness about warrants and of taking things for granted. he acquitted his former colleague of "corruption of reward;" but "in truth that makes the offence rather divers than less;" for some offences "are black, and others scarlet, some sordid, some presumptuous." he pronounced his sentence--the fine, the imprisonment; "for his place, i declare him unfit for it." "and the next day," says mr. spedding, "he reported to buckingham the result of the proceeding," and takes no small credit for his own part in it. it was thus that the court used bacon, and that bacon submitted to be used. he could have done, if he had been listened to, much nobler service. he had from the first seen, and urged as far as he could, the paramount necessity of retrenchment in the king's profligate expenditure. even buckingham had come to feel the necessity of it at last; and now that bacon filled a seat at the council, and that the prosecution of suffolk and an inquiry into the abuses of the navy had forced on those in power the urgency of economy, there was a chance of something being done to bring order into the confusion of the finances. retrenchment began at the king's kitchen and the tables of his servants; an effort was made, not unsuccessfully, to extend it wider, under the direction of lionel cranfield, a self-made man of business from the city; but with such a court the task was an impossible one. it was not bacon's fault, though he sadly mismanaged his own private affairs, that the king's expenditure was not managed soberly and wisely. nor was it bacon's fault, as far as advice went, that james was always trying either to evade or to outwit a parliament which he could not, like the tudors, overawe. bacon's uniform counsel had been--look on a parliament as a certain necessity, but not only as a necessity, as also a unique and most precious means for uniting the crown with the nation, and proving to the world outside how englishmen love and honour their king, and their king trusts his subjects. deal with it frankly and nobly as becomes a king, not suspiciously like a huckster in a bargain. do not be afraid of parliament. be skilful in calling it, but don't attempt to "pack" it. use all due adroitness and knowledge of human nature, and necessary firmness and majesty, in managing it; keep unruly and mischievous people in their place, but do not be too anxious to meddle--"let nature work;" and above all, though of course you want money from it, do not let that appear as the chief or real cause of calling it. take the lead in legislation. be ready with some interesting or imposing points of reform, or policy, about which you ask your parliament to take counsel with you. take care to "frame and have ready some commonwealth bills, that may add respect to the king's government and acknowledgment of his care; not _wooing_ bills to make the king and his graces cheap, but good matter to set the parliament on work, that an empty stomach do not feed on humour." so from the first had bacon always thought; so he thought when he watched, as a spectator, james's blunders with his first parliament of ; so had he earnestly counselled james, when admitted to his confidence, as to the parliaments of and ; so again, but in vain, as chancellor, he advised him to meet the parliament of . it was wise, and from his point of view honest advice, though there runs all through it too much reliance on appearances which were not all that they seemed; there was too much thought of throwing dust in the eyes of troublesome and inconvenient people. but whatever motives there might have been behind, it would have been well if james had learned from bacon how to deal with englishmen. but he could not. "i wonder," said james one day to gondomar, "that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution as the house of commons to have come into existence. i am a stranger, and found it here when i arrived, so that i am obliged to put up with what i cannot get rid of." james was the only one of our many foreign kings who, to the last, struggled to avoid submitting himself to the conditions of an english throne. chapter vi. bacon's fall. when parliament met on january , / , and bacon, as lord chancellor, set forth in his ceremonial speeches to the king and to the speaker the glories and blessings of james's reign, no man in england had more reason to think himself fortunate. he had reached the age of sixty, and had gained the object of his ambition. more than that, he was conscious that in his great office he was finding full play for his powers and his high public purposes. he had won greatly on the confidence of the king. he had just received a fresh mark of honour from him: a few days before he had been raised a step in the peerage, and he was now viscount st. alban's. with buckingham he seemed to be on terms of the most affectionate familiarity, exchanging opinions freely with him on every subject. and parliament met in good-humour. they voted money at once. one of the matters which interested bacon most--the revision of the statute book--they took up as one of their first measures, and appointed a select committee to report upon it. and what, amid the apparent felicity of the time, was of even greater personal happiness to bacon, the first step of the "great instauration" had been taken. during the previous autumn, oct. , , the _novum organum_, the first instalment of his vast design, was published, the result of the work of thirty years; and copies were distributed to great people, among others to coke. he apprehended no evil; he had nothing to fear, and much to hope from the times. his sudden and unexpected fall, so astonishing and so irreparably complete, is one of the strangest events of that still imperfectly comprehended time. there had been, and were still to be, plenty of instances of the downfall of power, as ruinous and even more tragic, though scarcely any one more pathetic in its surprise and its shame. but it is hard to find one of which so little warning was given, and the causes of which are at once in part so clear, and in part so obscure and unintelligible. such disasters had to be reckoned upon as possible chances by any one who ventured into public life. montaigne advises that the discipline of pain should be part of every boy's education, for the reason that every one in his day might be called upon to undergo the torture. and so every public man, in the england of the tudors and stuarts, entered on his career with the perfectly familiar expectation of possibly closing it--it might be in an honourable and ceremonious fashion, in the tower and on the scaffold--just as he had to look forward to the possibility of closing it by small-pox or the plague. so that when disaster came, though it might be unexpected, as death is unexpected, it was a turn of things which ought not to take a man by surprise. but some premonitory signs usually gave warning. there was nothing to warn bacon that the work which he believed he was doing so well would be interrupted. we look in vain for any threatenings of the storm. what the men of his time thought and felt about bacon it is not easy to ascertain. appearances are faint and contradictory; he himself, though scornful of judges who sought to be "popular," believed that he "came in with the favour of the general;" that he "had a little popular reputation, which followeth me whether i will or no." no one for years had discharged the duties of his office with greater efficiency. scarcely a trace remains of any suspicion, previous to the attack upon him, of the justice of his decisions; no instance was alleged that, in fact, impure motives had controlled the strength and lucidity of an intellect which loved to be true and right for the mere pleasure of being so. nor was there anything in bacon's political position to make him specially obnoxious above all others of the king's council. he maintained the highest doctrines of prerogative; but they were current doctrines, both at the council board and on the bench; and they were not discredited nor extinguished by his fall. to be on good terms with james and buckingham meant a degree of subservience which shocks us now; but it did not shock people then, and he did not differ from his fellows in regarding it as part of his duty as a public servant of the crown. no doubt he had enemies--some with old grudges like southampton, who had been condemned with essex; some like suffolk, smarting under recent reprimands and the biting edge of bacon's tongue; some like coke, hating him from constitutional antipathies and the strong antagonism of professional doctrines, for a long course of rivalry and for mortifying defeats. but there is no appearance of preconcerted efforts among them to bring about his overthrow. he did not at the time seem to be identified with anything dangerous or odious. there was no doubt a good deal of dissatisfaction with chancery--among the common lawyers, because it interfered with their business; in the public, partly from the traditions of its slowness, partly from its expensiveness, partly because, being intended for special redress of legal hardship, it was sure to disappoint one party to a suit. but bacon thought that he had reformed chancery. he had also done a great deal to bring some kind of order, or at least hopefulness of order, into the king's desperate finances. and he had never set himself against parliament. on the contrary, he had always been forward to declare that the king could not do without parliament, and that parliament only needed to be dealt with generously, and as "became a king," to be not a danger and hindrance to the crown but its most sincere and trustworthy support. what was then to portend danger to bacon when the parliament of / met? the house of commons at its meeting was thoroughly loyal and respectful; it meant to be _benedictum et pacificum parliamentum_. every one knew that there would be "grievances" which would not be welcome to the court, but they did not seem likely to touch him. every one knew that there would be questions raised about unpopular patents and oppressive monopolies, and about their legality; and it was pretty well agreed upon at court that they should be given up as soon as complained of. but bacon was not implicated more than the crown lawyers before him, in what all the crown lawyers had always defended. there was dissatisfaction about the king's extravagance and wastefulness, about his indecision in the cause of the elector palatine, about his supposed intrigues with papistical and tyrannical spain; but bacon had nothing to do with all this except, as far as he could, to give wise counsel and warning. the person who made the king despised and hated was the splendid and insolent favourite, buckingham. it might have been thought that the one thing to be set against much that was wrong in the state was the just and enlightened and speedy administration of equity in the chancery. when parliament met, though nothing seemed to threaten mischief, it met with a sturdy purpose of bringing to account certain delinquents whose arrogance and vexations of the subjects had provoked the country, and who were supposed to shelter themselves under the countenance of buckingham. michell and mompesson were rascals whose misdemeanors might well try the patience of a less spirited body than an english house of commons. buckingham could not protect them, and hardly tried to do so. but just as one electric current "induces" another by neighbourhood, so all this deep indignation against buckingham's creatures created a fierce temper of suspicion about corruption all through the public service. two committees were early appointed by the house of commons: one a committee on grievances, such as the monopolies; the other, a committee to inquire into abuses in the courts of justice and receive petitions about them. in the course of the proceedings, the question arose in the house as to the authorities or "referees" who had certified to the legality of the crown patents or grants which had been so grossly abused; and among these "referees" were the lord chancellor and other high officers, both legal and political. it was the little cloud. but lookers-on like chamberlain did not think much of it. "the referees," he wrote on feb. th, "who certified the legality of the patents are glanced at, but they are chiefly above the reach of the house; they attempt so much that they will accomplish little." coke, who was now the chief leader in parliament, began to talk ominously of precedents, and to lay down rules about the power of the house to punish--rules which were afterwards found to have no authority for them. cranfield, the representative of severe economy, insisted that the honour of the king required that the referees, whoever they were, should be called to account. the gathering clouds shifted a little, when the sense of the house seemed to incline to giving up all retrospective action, and to a limitation for the future by statute of the questionable prerogative--a limitation which was in fact attempted by a bill thrown out by the lords. but they gathered again when the commons determined to bring the whole matter before the house of lords. the king wrote to warn bacon of what was coming. the proposed conference was staved off by management for a day or two, but it could not be averted, and the lords showed their eagerness for it. and two things by this time--the beginning of march--seemed now to have become clear, first, that under the general attack on the referees was intended a blow against bacon; next, that the person whom he had most reason to fear was sir edward coke. the storm was growing; but bacon was still unalarmed, though buckingham had been frightened into throwing the blame on the referees. "i do hear," he writes to buckingham (dating his letter on march th, "the day i received the seal"), "from divers of judgement, that to-morrow's conference is like to pass in a calm, as to the referees. sir lionel cranfield, who hath been formerly the trumpet, said yesterday that he did now incline unto sir john walter's opinion and motion not to have the referees meddled with, otherwise than to discount it from the king; and so not to look back, but to the future. and i do hear almost all men of judgement in the house wish now that way. i woo nobody; i do but listen, and i have doubt only of sir edward coke, who i wish had some round _caveat_ given him from the king; for your lordship hath no great power with him. but a word from the king mates him." but coke's opportunity had come. the house of commons was disposed for gentler measures. but he was able to make it listen to his harsher counsels, and from this time his hand appears in all that was done. the first conference was a tame and dull one. the spokesmen had been slack in their disagreeable and perhaps dangerous duty. but coke and his friends took them sharply to task. "the heart and tongue of sir edward coke are true relations," said one of his fervent supporters; "but his pains hath not reaped that harvest of praise that he hath deserved. for the referees, they are as transcendent delinquents as any other, and sure their souls made a wilful elopement from their bodies when they made these certificates." a second conference was held with the lords, and this time the charge was driven home. the referees were named, the chancellor at the head of them. when bacon rose to explain and justify his acts he was sharply stopped, and reminded that he was transgressing the orders of the house in speaking till the committees were named to examine the matter. what was even more important, the king had come to the house of lords (march th), and frightened, perhaps, about his subsidies, told them "that he was not guilty of those grievances which are now discovered, but that he grounded his judgement upon others who have misled him." the referees would be attacked, people thought, if the lower house had courage. all this was serious. as things were drifting, it seemed as if bacon might have to fight the legal question of the prerogative in the form of a criminal charge, and be called upon to answer the accusation of being the minister of a crown which legal language pronounced absolute, and of a king who interpreted legal language to the letter; and further, to meet his accusers after the king himself had disavowed what his servant had done. what passed between bacon and the king is confused and uncertain; but after his speech the king could scarcely have thought of interfering with the inquiry. the proceedings went on; committees were named for the several points of inquiry; and bacon took part in these arrangements. it was a dangerous position to have to defend himself against an angry house of commons, led and animated by coke and cranfield. but though the storm had rapidly thickened, the charges against the referees were not against him alone. his mistake in law, if it was a mistake, was shared by some of the first lawyers and first councillors in england. there was a battle before him, but not a hopeless one. "_modicæ fidei, quare dubitasti_" he writes about this time to an anxious friend. but in truth the thickening storm had been gathering over his head alone. it was against him that the whole attack was directed; as soon as it took a different shape, the complaints against the other referees, such as the chief-justice, who was now lord treasurer, though some attempt was made to press them, were quietly dropped. what was the secret history of these weeks we do not know. but the result of bacon's ruin was that buckingham was saved. "as they speak of the turquoise stone in a ring," bacon had said to buckingham when he was made chancellor, "i will break into twenty pieces before you have the least fall." without knowing what he pledged himself to, he was taken at his word. at length the lightning fell. during the early part of march, while these dangerous questions were mooted about the referees, a committee, appointed early in the session, had also been sitting on abuses in courts of justice, and as part of their business, an inquiry had been going on into the ways of the subordinate officers of the court of chancery. bacon had early (feb. th) sent a message to the committee courting full inquiry, "willingly consenting that any man might speak anything of his court." on the th of march the chairman, sir r. philips, reported that he had in his hands "divers petitions, many frivolous and clamorous, many of weight and consequence." cranfield, who presided over the court of wards, had quarrelled fiercely with the chancery, where he said there was "neither law, equity, nor conscience," and pressed the inquiry, partly, it may be, to screen his own court, which was found fault with by the lawyers. some scandalous abuses were brought to light in the chancery. they showed that "bacon was at fault in the art of government," and did not know how to keep his servants in order. one of them, john churchill, an infamous forger of chancery orders, finding things going hard with him, and "resolved," it is said, "not to sink alone," offered his confessions of all that was going on wrong in the court. but on the th of march things took another turn. it was no longer a matter of doubtful constitutional law; no longer a question of slack discipline over his officers. to the astonishment, if not of the men of his own day, at least to the unexhausted astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the committee to the commons against the lord chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge. two suitors charged him with receiving bribes. bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and he wrote thus to buckingham. at length he had begun to see the meaning of all these inquiries, and to what they were driving. "my very good lord,--your lordship spake of purgatory. i am now in it, but my mind is in a calm, for my fortune is not my felicity. i know i have clean hands and a clean heart, and i hope a clean house for friends or servants. but job himself, or whosoever was the justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul, specially in a time when greatness is the mark and accusation is the game. and if this be to be a chancellor. i think if the great seal lay upon hounslow heath nobody would take it up. but the king and your lordship will, i hope, put an end to these miseries one way or other. and in troth that which i fear most is lest continual attendance and business, together with these cares, and want of time to do my weak body right this spring by diet and physic, will cast me down; and then it will be thought feigning or fainting. but i hope in god i shall hold out. god prosper you." the first charges attracted others, which were made formal matters of complaint by the house of commons. john churchill, to save himself, was busy setting down cases of misdoing; and probably suitors of themselves became ready to volunteer evidence. but of this bacon as yet knew nothing. he was at this time only aware that there were persons who were "hunting out complaints against him," that the attack was changed from his law to his private character; he had found an unfavourable feeling in the house of lords; and he knew well enough what it was to have powerful enemies in those days when a sentence was often settled before a trial. to any one, such a state of things was as formidable as the first serious symptoms of a fever. he was uneasy, as a man might well be on whom the house of commons had fixed its eye, and to whom the house of lords had shown itself unfriendly. but he was as yet conscious of nothing fatal to his defence, and he knew that if false accusations could be lightly made they could also be exposed. a few days after the first mention of corruption the commons laid their complaints of him before the house of lords, and on the same day (march ) bacon, finding himself too ill to go to the house, wrote to the peers by buckingham, requesting them that as some "complaints of base bribery" had come before them, they would give him a fair opportunity of defending himself, and of cross-examining witnesses; especially begging, that considering the number of decrees which he had to make in a year--more than two thousand--and "the courses which had been taken in hunting out complaints against him," they would not let their opinion of him be affected by the mere number of charges that might be made. their short verbal answer, moved by southampton (march ), that they meant to proceed by right rule of justice, and would be glad if he cleared his honour, was not encouraging. and now that the commons had brought the matter before them, the lords took it entirely into their own hands, appointing three committees, and examining the witnesses themselves. new witnesses came forward every day with fresh cases of gifts and presents, "bribes" received by the lord chancellor. when parliament rose for the easter vacation (march -april ), the committees continued sitting. a good deal probably passed of which no record remains. when the commons met again (april ) coke was full of gibes about _instauratio magna_--the true _instauratio_ was to restore laws--and two days after an act was brought in for review and reversal of decrees in courts of equity. it was now clear that the case against bacon had assumed formidable dimensions, and also a very strange, and almost monstrous shape. for the lords, who were to be the judges, had by their committees taken the matter out of the hands of the commons, the original accusers, and had become themselves the prosecutors, collecting and arranging evidence, accepting or rejecting depositions, and doing all that counsel or the committing magistrate would do preliminary to a trial. there appears to have been no cross-examining of witnesses on bacon's behalf, or hearing witnesses for him--not unnaturally at this stage of business, when the prosecutors were engaged in making out their own case; but considering that the future judges had of their own accord turned themselves into the prosecutors, the unfairness was great. at the same time it does not appear that bacon did anything to watch how things went in the committees, which had his friends in them as well as his enemies, and are said to have been open courts. towards the end of march, chamberlain wrote to carleton that "the houses were working hard at cleansing out the augæan stable of monopolies, and also extortions in courts of justice. the petitions against the lord chancellor were too numerous to be got through: his chief friends and brokers of bargains, sir george hastings and sir richard young, and others attacked, are obliged to accuse him in their own defence, though very reluctantly. his ordinary bribes were £ , £ , and even £ .... the lords admit no evidence except on oath. one churchill, who was dismissed from the chancery court for extortion, is the chief cause of the chancellor's ruin."[ ] bacon was greatly alarmed. he wrote to buckingham, who was "his anchor in these floods." he wrote to the king; he was at a loss to account for the "tempest that had come on him;" he could not understand what he had done to offend the country or parliament; he had never "taken rewards to pervert justice, however he might be frail, and partake of the abuse of the time." "time hath been when i have brought unto you _genitum columbæ_, from others. now i bring it from myself. i fly unto your majesty with the wings of a dove, which once within these seven days i thought would have carried me a higher flight. "when i enter into myself, i find not the materials of such a tempest as is comen upon me. i have been (as your majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried _suavibus modis_. i have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. i have been no haughty or intolerable or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage. i have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. whence should this be? for these are the things that use to raise dislikes abroad." and he ended by entreating the king to help him: "that which i thirst after, as the hart after the streams, is that i may know by my matchless friend [buckingham] that presenteth to you this letter, your majesty's heart (which is an _abyssus_ of goodness, as i am an _abyssus_ of misery) towards me. i have been ever your man, and counted myself but an usufructuary of myself, the property being yours; and now making myself an oblation to do with me as may best conduce to the honour of your justice, the honour of your mercy, and the use of your service, resting as "clay in your majesty's gracious hands, "fr. st. aldan, canc. "march , ." to the world he kept up an undismayed countenance: he went down to gorhambury, attended by troops of friends. "this man," said prince charles, when he met his company, "scorns to go out like a snuff." but at gorhambury he made his will, leaving "his name to the next ages and to foreign nations;" and he wrote a prayer, which is a touching evidence of his state of mind-- "most gracious lord god, my merciful father, from my youth up, my creator, my redeemer, my comforter. thou (o lord) soundest and searchest the depths and secrets of all hearts; thou knowledgest the upright of heart, thou judgest the hypocrite, thou ponderest men's thoughts and doings as in a balance, thou measurest their intentions as with a line, vanity and crooked ways cannot be hid from thee. "remember (o lord) how thy servant hath walked before thee; remember what i have first sought, and what hath been principal in mine intentions. i have loved thy assemblies, i have mourned for the divisions of thy church, i have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. this vine which thy right hand hath planted in this nation, i have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. the state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in my eyes: i have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; i have (though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. if any have been mine enemies, i thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but i have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. thy creatures have been my books, but thy scriptures much more. i have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but i have found thee in thy temples. "thousand have been my sins, and ten thousand my transgressions; but thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart, through thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal upon thy altar. o lord, my strength, i have since my youth met with thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible providence. as thy favours have increased upon me, so have thy corrections; so as thou hast been alway near me, o lord; and ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me; and when i have ascended before men, i have descended in humiliation before thee. "and now when i thought most of peace and honour, thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me, according to thy former loving-kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child. just are thy judgements upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea to the sea, earth, heavens? and all these are nothing to thy mercies. "besides my innumerable sins, i confess before thee that i am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which i have misspent in things for which i was least fit; so as i may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage. be merciful unto me (o lord) for my saviour's sake, and receive me into thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways." bacon up to this time strangely, if the committees were "open courts," was entirely ignorant of the particulars of the charge which was accumulating against him. he had an interview with the king, which was duly reported to the house, and he placed his case before james, distinguishing between the "three cases of bribery supposed in a judge--a corrupt bargain; carelessness in receiving a gift while the cause is going on; and, what is innocent, receiving a gift after it is ended." and he meant in such words as these to place himself at the king's disposal, and ask his direction: "for my fortune, _summa summarum_ with me is, that i may not be made altogether unprofitable to do your majesty service or honour. if your majesty continue me as i am, i hope i shall be a new man, and shall reform things out of feeling, more than another can do out of example. if i cast part of my burden, i shall be more strong and _delivré_ to bear the rest. and, to tell your majesty what my thoughts run upon, i think of writing a story of england, and of recompiling of your laws into a better digest." the king referred him to the house; and the house now (april th) prepared to gather up into "one brief" the charges against the lord chancellor, still, however, continuing open to receive fresh complaints. meanwhile the chase after abuses of all kinds was growing hotter in the commons--abuses in patents and monopolies, which revived the complaints against referees, among whom bacon was frequently named, and abuses in the courts of justice. the attack passed by and spared the common law courts, as was noticed in the course of the debates; it spared cranfield's court, the court of wards. but it fell heavily on the chancery and the ecclesiastical courts. "i have neither power nor will to defend chancery," said sir john bennett, the judge of the prerogative court; but a few weeks after his turn came, and a series of as ugly charges as could well be preferred against a judge, charges of extortion as well as bribery, were reported to the house by its committee. there can be no doubt of the grossness of many of these abuses, and the zeal against them was honest, though it would have shown more courage if it had flown at higher game; but the daily discussion of them helped to keep alive and inflame the general feeling against so great a "delinquent" as the lord chancellor was supposed to be. and, indeed, two of the worst charges against him were made before the commons. one was a statement made in the house by sir george hastings, a member of the house, who had been the channel of awbry's gift, that when he had told bacon that if questioned he must admit it, bacon's answer was: "george, if you do so, i must deny it upon my honour--upon my oath." the other was that he had given an opinion in favour of some claim of the masters in chancery for which he received £ , and with which he said that all the judges agreed--an assertion which all the judges denied. of these charges there is no contradiction.[ ] bacon made one more appeal to the king (april ). he hoped that, by resigning the seal, he might be spared the sentence: "but now if not _per omnipotentiam_ (as the divines speak), but _per potestatem suaviter disponentem_, your majesty will graciously save me from a sentence with the good liking of the house, and that cup may pass from me; it is the utmost of my desires. "this i move with the more belief, because i assure myself that if it be reformation that is sought, the very taking away the seal, upon my general submission, will be as much in example for these four hundred years as any furder severity." at length, informally, but for the first time distinctly, the full nature of the accusation, with its overwhelming list of cases, came to bacon's knowledge (april or ). from the single charge, made in the middle of march, it had swelled in force and volume like a rising mountain torrent. that all these charges should have sprung out of the ground from their long concealment is strange enough. how is it that nothing was heard of them when the things happened? and what is equally strange is that these charges were substantially true and undeniable; that this great lord chancellor, so admirable in his despatch of business, hitherto so little complained of for wrong or unfair decisions, had been in the habit of receiving large sums of money from suitors, in some cases certainly while the suit was pending. and further, while receiving them, while perfectly aware of the evil of receiving gifts on the seat of judgment, while emphatically warning inferior judges against yielding to the temptation, he seems really to have continued unconscious of any wrong-doing while gift after gift was offered and accepted. but nothing is so strange as the way in which bacon met the charges. tremendous as the accusation was, he made not the slightest fight about it. up to this time he had held himself innocent. now, overwhelmed and stunned, he made no attempt at defence; he threw up the game without a struggle, and volunteered an absolute and unreserved confession of his guilt--that is to say, he declined to stand his trial. only, he made an earnest application to the house of lords, in proceeding to sentence, to be content with a general admission of guilt, and to spare him the humiliation of confessing the separate facts of alleged "bribery" which were contained in the twenty-eight articles of his accusation. this submission, "grounded only on rumour," for the articles of charge had not yet been communicated to him by the accusers, took the house by surprise. "no lord spoke to it, after it had been read, for a long time." but they did not mean that he should escape with this. the house treated the suggestion with impatient scorn (april ). "it is too late," said lord saye. "no word of confession of any corruption in the lord chancellor's submission," said southampton; "it stands with the justice and honour of this house not to proceed without the parties' particular confession, or to have the parties to hear the charge, and we to hear the parties answer." the demand of the lords was strictly just, but cruel; the articles were now sent to him; he had been charged with definite offences; he must answer yes or no, confess them or defend himself. a further question arose whether he should not be sent for to appear at the bar. he still held the seals. "shall the great seal come to the bar?" asked lord pembroke. it was agreed that he was to be asked whether he would acknowledge the particulars. his answer was "that he will make no manner of defence to the charge, but meaneth to acknowledge corruption, and to make a particular confession to every point, and after that a humble submission. but he humbly craves liberty that, when the charge is more full than he finds the truth of the fact, he may make a declaration of the truth in such particulars, the charge being brief and containing not all the circumstances." and such a confession he made. "my lords," he said, to those who were sent to ask whether he would stand to it, "it is my act, my hand, my heart. i beseech your lordships be merciful to a broken reed." this was, of course, followed by a request to the king from the house to "sequester" the great seal. a commission was sent to receive it (may ). "the worse, the better," he answered to the wish, "that it had been better with him." "by the king's great favour i received the great seal; by my own great fault i have lost it." they intended him now to come to the bar to receive his sentence. but he was too ill to leave his bed. they did not push this point farther, but proceeded to settle the sentence (may ). he had asked for mercy, but he did not get it. there were men who talked of every extremity short of death. coke, indeed, in the commons, from his store of precedents, had cited cases where judges had been hanged for bribery. but the lords would not hear of this. "his offences foul," said lord arundel; "his confession pitiful. life not to be touched." but southampton, whom twenty years before he had helped to involve in essex's ruin, urged that he should be degraded from the peerage; and asked whether, at any rate, "he whom this house thinks unfit to be a constable shall come to the parliament." he was fined £ , . he was to be imprisoned in the tower during the king's pleasure. he was to be incapable of any office, place, or employment in the state or commonwealth. he was never to sit in parliament or come within the verge of the court. this was agreed to, buckingham only dissenting. "the lord chancellor is so sick," he said, "that he cannot live long." what is the history of this tremendous catastrophe by which, in less than two months, bacon was cast down from the height of fortune to become a byword of shame? he had enemies, who certainly were glad, but there is no appearance that it was the result of any plot or combination against him. he was involved, accidentally, it may almost be said, in the burst of anger excited by the intolerable dealings of others. the indignation provoked by michell and mompesson and their associates at that particular moment found bacon in its path, doing, as it seemed, in his great seat of justice, even worse than they; and when he threw up all attempt at defence, and his judges had his hand to an unreserved confession of corruption, both generally, and in the long list of cases alleged against him, it is not wonderful that they came to the conclusion, as the rest of the world did, that he was as bad as the accusation painted him--a dishonest and corrupt judge. yet it is strange that they should not have observed that not a single charge of a definitely unjust decision was brought, at any rate was proved, against him. he had taken money, they argued, and therefore he must be corrupt; but if he had taken money to pervert judgment, some instance of the iniquity would certainly have been brought forward and proved. there is no such instance to be found; though, of course, there were plenty of dissatisfied suitors; of course the men who had paid their money and lost their cause were furious. but in vain do we look for any case of proved injustice. the utmost that can be said is that in some cases he showed favour in pushing forward and expediting suits. so that the real charge against bacon assumes, to us who have not to deal practically with dangerous abuses, but to judge conduct and character, a different complexion. instead of being the wickedness of perverting justice and selling his judgments for bribes, it takes the shape of allowing and sharing in a dishonourable and mischievous system of payment for service, which could not fail to bring with it temptation and discredit, and in which fair reward could not be distinguished from unlawful gain. such a system it was high time to stop; and in this rough and harsh way, which also satisfied some personal enmities, it was stopped. we may put aside for good the charge on which he was condemned, and which in words he admitted--of being corrupt as a judge. his real fault--and it was a great one--was that he did not in time open his eyes to the wrongness and evil, patent to every one, and to himself as soon as pointed out, of the traditional fashion in his court of eking out by irregular gifts the salary of such an office as his. thus bacon was condemned both to suffering and to dishonour; and, as has been observed, condemned without a trial. but it must also be observed that it was entirely owing to his own act that he had not a trial, and with a trial the opportunity of cross-examining witnesses and of explaining openly the matters urged against him. the proceedings in the lords were preliminary to the trial; when the time came, bacon, of his own choice, stopped them from going farther, by his confession and submission. considering the view which he claimed to take of his own case, his behaviour was wanting in courage and spirit. from the moment that the attack on him shifted from a charge of authorising illegal monopolies to a charge of personal corruption, he never fairly met his accusers. the distress and anxiety, no doubt, broke down his health; and twice, when he was called upon to be in his place in the house of lords, he was obliged to excuse himself on the ground that he was too ill to leave his bed. but between the time of the first charge and his condemnation seven weeks elapsed; and though he was able to go down to gorhambury, he never in that time showed himself in the house of lords. whether or not, while the committees were busy in collecting the charges, he would have been allowed to take part, to put questions to the witnesses, or to produce his own, he never attempted to do so; and by the course he took there was no other opportunity. to have stood his trial could hardly have increased his danger, or aggravated his punishment; and it would only have been worthy of his name and place, if not to have made a fight for his character and integrity, at least to have bravely said what he had made up his mind to admit, and what no one could have said more nobly and pathetically, in open parliament. but he was cowed at the fierceness of the disapprobation manifest in both houses. he shrunk from looking his peers and his judges in the face. his friends obtained for him that he should not be brought to the bar, and that all should pass in writing. but they saved his dignity at the expense of his substantial reputation. the observation that the charges against him were not sifted by cross-examination applies equally to his answers to them. the allegations of both sides would have come down to us in a more trustworthy shape if the case had gone on. but to give up the struggle, and to escape by any humiliation from a regular public trial, seems to have been his only thought when he found that the king and buckingham could not or would not save him. but the truth is that he knew that a trial of this kind was a trial only in name. he knew that, when a charge of this sort was brought, it was not meant to be really investigated in open court, but to be driven home by proofs carefully prepared beforehand, against which the accused had little chance. he knew, too, that in those days to resist in earnest an accusation was apt to be taken as an insult to the court which entertained it. and further, for the prosecutor to accept a submission and confession without pushing to the formality of a public trial, and therefore a public exposure, was a favour. it was a favour which by his advice, as against the king's honour, had been refused to suffolk; it was a favour which, in a much lighter charge, had by his advice been refused to his colleague yelverton only a few months before, when bacon, in sentencing him, took occasion to expatiate on the heinous guilt of misprisions or mistakes in men in high places. the humiliation was not complete without the trial, but it was for humiliation and not fair investigation that the trial was wanted. bacon knew that the trial would only prolong his agony, and give a further triumph to his enemies. that there was any plot against bacon, and much more that buckingham to save himself was a party to it, is of course absurd. buckingham, indeed, was almost the only man in the lords who said anything for bacon, and, alone, he voted against his punishment. but considering what buckingham was, and what he dared to do when he pleased, he was singularly cool in helping bacon. williams, the astute dean of westminster, who was to be bacon's successor as lord keeper, had got his ear, and advised him not to endanger himself by trying to save delinquents. he did not. indeed, as the inquiry went on, he began to take the high moral ground; he was shocked at the chancellor's conduct; he would not have believed that it could have been so bad; his disgrace was richly deserved. buckingham kept up appearances by saying a word for him from time to time in parliament, which he knew would be useless, and which he certainly took no measures to make effective. it is sometimes said that buckingham never knew what dissimulation was. he was capable, at least, of the perfidy and cowardice of utter selfishness. bacon's conspicuous fall diverted men's thoughts from the far more scandalous wickedness of the great favourite. but though there was no plot, though the blow fell upon bacon almost accidentally, there were many who rejoiced to be able to drive it home. we can hardly wonder that foremost among them was coke. this was the end of the long rivalry between bacon and coke, from the time that essex pressed bacon against coke in vain to the day when bacon as chancellor drove coke from his seat for his bad law, and as privy councillor ordered him to be prosecuted in the star chamber for riotously breaking open men's doors to get his daughter. the two men thoroughly disliked and undervalued one another. coke made light of bacon's law. bacon saw clearly coke's narrowness and ignorance out of that limited legal sphere in which he was supposed to know everything, his prejudiced and interested use of his knowledge, his coarseness and insolence. but now in parliament coke was supreme, "our hercules," as his friends said. he posed as the enemy of all abuses and corruption. he brought his unrivalled, though not always accurate, knowledge of law and history to the service of the committees, and took care that the chancellor's name should not be forgotten when it could be connected with some bad business of patent or chancery abuse. it was the great revenge of the common law on the encroaching and insulting chancery which had now proved so foul. and he could not resist the opportunity of marking the revenge of professional knowledge over bacon's airs of philosophical superiority. "to restore things to their original" was his sneer in parliament, "this, _instauratio magna. instaurare paras--instaura leges justitiamque prius_."[ ] the charge of corruption was as completely a surprise to bacon as it was to the rest of the world. and yet, as soon as the blot was hit, he saw in a moment that his position was hopeless--he knew that he had been doing wrong; though all the time he had never apparently given it a thought, and he insisted, what there is every reason to believe, that no present had induced him to give an unjust decision. it was the power of custom over a character naturally and by habit too pliant to circumstances. custom made him insensible to the evil of receiving recommendations from buckingham in favour of suitors. custom made him insensible to the evil of what it seems every one took for granted--receiving gifts from suitors. in the court of james i. the atmosphere which a man in office breathed was loaded with the taint of gifts and bribes. presents were as much the rule, as indispensable for those who hoped to get on, as they are now in turkey. even in elizabeth's days, when bacon was struggling to win her favour, and was in the greatest straits for money, he borrowed £ to buy a jewel for the queen. when he was james's servant the giving of gifts became a necessity. new year's day brought round its tribute of gold vases and gold pieces to the king and buckingham. and this was the least. money was raised by the sale of officers and titles. for £ , , having previously offered £ , in vain, the chief-justice of england, montague, became lord mandeville and treasurer. the bribe was sometimes disguised: a man became a privy councillor, like cranfield, or a chief-justice, like ley (afterwards "the good earl," "unstained with gold or fee," of milton's sonnet), by marrying a cousin or a niece of buckingham. when bacon was made a peer, he had also given him "the making of a baron;" that is to say, he might raise money by bargaining with some one who wanted a peerage; when, however, later on, he asked buckingham for a repetition of the favour, buckingham gave him a lecture on the impropriety of prodigality, which should make it seem that "while the king was asking money of parliament with one hand he was giving with the other." how things were in chancery in the days of the queen, and of bacon's predecessors, we know little; but bacon himself implies that there was nothing new in what he did. "all my lawyers," said james, "are so bred and nursed in corruption that they cannot leave it." bacon's chancellorship coincided with the full bloom of buckingham's favour; and buckingham set the fashion, beyond all before him, of extravagance in receiving and spending. encompassed by such assumptions and such customs, bacon administered the chancery. suitors did there what people did everywhere else; they acknowledged by a present the trouble they gave, or the benefit they gained. it may be that bacon's known difficulties about money, his expensive ways and love of pomp, his easiness of nature, his lax discipline over his servants, encouraged this profuseness of giving. and bacon let it be. he asked no questions; he knew that he worked hard and well; he knew that it could go on without affecting his purpose to do justice "from the greatest to the groom." a stronger character, a keener conscience, would have faced the question, not only whether he was not setting the most ruinous of precedents, but whether any man could be so sure of himself as to go on dealing justly with gifts in his hands. but bacon, who never dared to face the question, what james was, what buckingham was, let himself be spellbound by custom. he knew in the abstract that judges ought to have nothing to do with gifts, and had said so impressively in his charges to them. yet he went on self-complacent, secure, almost innocent, building up a great tradition of corruption in the very heart of english justice, till the challenge of parliament, which began in him its terrible and relentless, but most unequal, prosecution of justice against ministers who had betrayed the commonwealth in serving the crown, woke him from his dream, and made him see, as others saw it, the guilt of a great judge who, under whatever extenuating pretext, allowed the suspicion to arise that he might sell justice. "in the midst of a state of as great affliction as mortal man can endure," he wrote to the lords of the parliament, in making his submission, "i shall begin with the professing gladness in some things. the first is that hereafter the greatness of a judge or magistrate shall be no sanctuary or protection of guiltiness, which is the beginning of a golden world. the next, that after this example it is like that judges will fly from anything that is in the likeness of corruption as from a serpent." bacon's own judgment on himself, deliberately repeated, is characteristic, and probably comes near the truth. "howsoever, i acknowledge the sentence just and for reformation's sake fit," he writes to buckingham from the tower, where, for form's sake, he was imprisoned for a few miserable days, he yet had been "the justest chancellor that hath been in the five changes that have been since sir nicolas bacon's time." he repeated the same thing yet more deliberately in later times. "_i was the justest judge that was in england these fifty years. but it was the justest censure in parliament that was these two hundred years._" he might have gone on to add, "the wisest counsellor; and yet none on whom rested heavier blame; none of whom england might more justly complain." good counsels given, submissive acquiescence in the worst--this is the history of his statesmanship. bacon, whose eye was everywhere, was not sparing of his counsels. on all the great questions of the time he has left behind abundant evidence, not only of what he thought, but of what he advised. and in every case these memorials are marked with the insight, the independence, the breadth of view, and the moderation of a mind which is bent on truth. he started, of course, from a basis which we are now hardly able to understand or allow for, the idea of absolute royal power and prerogative which james had enlarged and hardened out of the kingship of the tudors, itself imperious and arbitrary enough, but always seeking, with a tact of which james was incapable, to be in touch and sympathy with popular feeling. but it was a basis which in principle every one of any account as yet held or professed to hold, and which bacon himself held on grounds of philosophy and reason. he could see no hope for orderly and intelligent government except in a ruler whose wisdom had equal strength to assert itself; and he looked down with incredulity and scorn on the notion of anything good coming out of what the world then knew or saw of popular opinion or parliamentary government. but when it came to what was wise and fitting for absolute power to do in the way of general measures and policy, he was for the most part right. he saw the inexorable and pressing necessity of putting the finance of the kingdom on a safe footing. he saw the necessity of a sound and honest policy in ireland. he saw the mischief of the spanish alliance in spite of his curious friendship with gondomar, and detected the real and increasing weakness of the spanish monarchy, which still awed mankind. he saw the growing danger of abuses in church and state which were left untouched, and were protected by the punishment of those who dared to complain of them. he saw the confusion and injustice of much of that common law of which the lawyers were so proud; and would have attempted, if he had been able, to emulate justinian, and anticipate the code napoleon, by a rational and consistent digest. above all, he never ceased to impress on james the importance, and, if wisely used, the immense advantages, of his parliaments. himself, for great part of his life, an active and popular member of the house of commons, he saw that not only it was impossible to do without it, but that, if fairly, honourably, honestly dealt with, it would become a source of power and confidence which would double the strength of the government both at home and abroad. yet of all this wisdom nothing came. the finance of the kingdom was still ruined by extravagance and corruption in a time of rapidly-developing prosperity and wealth. the wounds of ireland were unhealed. it was neither peace nor war with spain, and hot infatuation for its friendship alternated with cold fits of distrust and estrangement. abuses flourished and multiplied under great patronage. the king's one thought about parliament was how to get as much money out of it as he could, with as little other business as possible. bacon's counsels were the prophecies of cassandra in that so prosperous but so disastrous reign. all that he did was to lend the authority of his presence, in james's most intimate counsels, to policy and courses of which he saw the unwisdom and the perils. james and buckingham made use of him when they wanted. but they would have been very different in their measures and their statesmanship if they had listened to him. mirabeau said, what of course had been said before him, "on ne vaut, dans la partie exécutive de la vie humaine, que par le caractère." this is the key to bacon's failures as a judge and as a statesman, and why, knowing so much more and judging so much more wisely than james and buckingham, he must be identified with the misdoings of that ignoble reign. he had the courage of his opinions; but a man wants more than that: he needs the manliness and the public spirit to enforce them, if they are true and salutary. but this is what bacon had not. he did not mind being rebuffed; he knew that he was right, and did not care. but to stand up against the king, to contradict him after he had spoken, to press an opinion or a measure on a man whose belief in his own wisdom was infinite, to risk not only being set down as a dreamer, but the king's displeasure, and the ruin of being given over to the will of his enemies, this bacon had not the fibre or the stiffness or the self-assertion to do. he did not do what a man of firm will and strength of purpose, a man of high integrity, of habitual resolution, would have done. such men insist when they are responsible, and when they know that they are right; and they prevail, or accept the consequences. bacon, knowing all that he did, thinking all that he thought, was content to be the echo and the instrument of the cleverest, the foolishest, the vainest, the most pitiably unmanly of english kings. footnotes: [ ] _calendar of state papers_ (domestic), march , . [ ] _commons' journals_, march , april ; iii. , - . [ ] _commons' journals_, iii. . in his copy of the _novum organum_, received _ex dono auctoris_, coke wrote the same words. "_auctori consilium_. instaurare paras veterum documenta sophorum: instaura leges justitiamque prius." he added, with allusion to the ship in the frontispiece of the _novum organum_, "it deserveth not to be read in schools, but to be freighted in the ship of fools." chapter vii. bacon's last years. [ - .] the tremendous sentences of those days, with their crushing fines, were often worse in sound than in reality. they meant that for the moment a man was defeated and disgraced. but it was quite understood that it did not necessarily follow that they would be enforced in all their severity. the fine might be remitted, the imprisonment shortened, the ban of exclusion taken off. at another turn of events or caprice the man himself might return to favour, and take his place in parliament or the council as if nothing had happened. but, of course, a man might have powerful enemies, and the sentence might be pressed. his fine might be assigned to some favourite; and he might be mined, even if in the long run he was pardoned; or he might remain indefinitely a prisoner. raleigh had remained to perish at last in dishonour. northumberland, raleigh's fellow-prisoner, after fifteen years' captivity, was released this year. the year after bacon's condemnation such criminals as lord and lady somerset were released from the tower, after a six years' imprisonment. southampton, the accomplice of essex, suffolk, sentenced as late as by bacon for embezzlement, sat in the house of peers which judged bacon, and both of them took a prominent part in judging him. to bacon the sentence was ruinous. it proved an irretrievable overthrow as regards public life, and, though some parts of it were remitted and others lightened, it plunged his private affairs into trouble which weighed heavily on him for his few remaining years. to his deep distress and horror he had to go to the tower to satisfy the terms of his sentence. "good my lord," he writes to buckingham, may , "procure my warrant for my discharge this day. death is so far from being unwelcome to me, as i have called for it as far as christian resolution would permit any time these two months. but to die before the time of his majesty's grace, in this disgraceful place, is even the worst that could be." he was released after two or three days, and he thanks buckingham (june ) for getting him out to do him and the king faithful service--"wherein, by the grace of god, your lordship shall find that my adversity hath neither _spent_ nor _pent_ my spirits." in the autumn his fine was remitted--that is, it was assigned to persons nominated by bacon, who, as the crown had the first claim on all his goods, served as a protection against his other creditors, who were many and some of them clamorous--and it was followed by his pardon. his successor, williams, now bishop of lincoln, who stood in great fear of parliament, tried to stop the pardon. the assignment of the fine, he said to buckingham, was a gross job--"it is much spoken against, not for the matter (for no man objects to that), but for the manner, which is full of knavery, and a wicked precedent. for by this assignment he is protected from all his creditors, which (i dare say) was neither his majesty's nor your lordship's meaning." it was an ill-natured and cowardly piece of official pedantry to plunge deeper a drowning man; but in the end the pardon was passed. it does not appear whether buckingham interfered to overrule the lord keeper's scruples. buckingham was certainly about this time very much out of humour with bacon, for a reason which, more than anything else, discloses the deep meanness which lurked under his show of magnanimity and pride. he had chosen this moment to ask bacon for york house. this meant that bacon would never more want it. even bacon was stung by such a request to a friend in his condition, and declined to part with it; and buckingham accordingly was offended, and made bacon feel it. indeed, there is reason to think with mr. spedding that for the sealing of his pardon bacon was indebted to the good offices with the king, not of buckingham, but of the spaniard, gondomar, with whom bacon had always been on terms of cordiality and respect, and who at this time certainly "brought about something on his behalf, which his other friends either had not dared to attempt or had not been able to obtain." but, though bacon had his pardon, he had not received permission to come within the verge of the court, which meant that he could not live in london. his affairs were in great disorder, his health was bad, and he was cut off from books. he wrote an appeal to the peers who had condemned him, asking them to intercede with the king for the enlargement of his liberty. "i am old," he wrote, "weak, ruined, in want, a very subject of pity." the tower at least gave him the neighbourhood of those who could help him. "there i could have company, physicians, conference with my creditors and friends about my debts and the necessities of my estate, helps for my studies and the writings i have in hand. here i live upon the sword-point of a sharp air, endangered if i go abroad, dulled if i stay within, solitary and comfortless, without company, banished from all opportunities to treat with any to do myself good, and to help out my wrecks." if the lords would recommend his suit to the king, "you shall do a work of charity and nobility, you shall do me good, you shall do my creditors good, and it may be you shall do posterity good, if out of the carcase of dead and rotten greatness (as out of samson's lion) there may be honey gathered for the use of future times." but parliament was dissolved before the touching appeal reached them; and bacon had to have recourse to other expedients. he consulted selden about the technical legality of the sentence. he appealed to buckingham, who vouchsafed to appear more placable. once more he had recourse to gondomar, "in that solitude of friends, which is the base-court of adversity," as a man whom he had "observed to have the magnanimity of his own nation and the cordiality of ours, and i am sure the wit of both"--and who had been equally kind to him in "both his fortunes;" and he proposed through gondomar to present gorhambury to buckingham "for nothing," as a peace-offering. but the purchase of his liberty was to come in another way. bacon had reconciled himself to giving up york house; but now buckingham would not have it: he had found another house, he said, which suited him as well. that is to say, he did not now choose to have york house from bacon himself; but he meant to have it. accordingly, buckingham let bacon know through a friend of bacon's, sir edward sackville, that the price of his liberty to live in london was the cession of york house--not to buckingham, but of all men in the world, to lionel cranfield, the man who had been so bitter against bacon in the house of commons. this is sir edward sackville's account to bacon of his talk with buckingham; it is characteristic of every one concerned: "in the forenoon he laid the law, but in the afternoon he preached the gospel; when, after some revivations of the old distaste concerning york house, he most nobly opened his heart unto me; wherein i read that which augured much good towards you. after which revelation the book was again sealed up, and must in his own time only by himself be again manifested unto you. i have leave to remember some of the vision, and am not forbidden to write it. he vowed (not court like), but constantly to appear your friend so much, as if his majesty should abandon the care of you, you should share his fortune with him. he pleased to tell me how much he had been beholden to you, how well he loved you, how unkindly he took the denial of your house (for so he will needs understand it); but the close for all this was harmonious, since he protested he would seriously begin to study your ends, now that the world should see he had no ends on you. he is in hand with the work, and therefore will by no means accept of your offer, though i can assure you the tender hath much won upon him, and mellowed his heart towards you, and your genius directed you aright when you writ that letter of denial to the duke. the king saw it, and all the rest, which made him say unto the marquis, you played an after-game well; and that now he had no reason to be much offended. "i have already talked of the revelation, and now am to speak in apocalyptical language, which i hope you will rightly comment: whereof if you make difficulty, the bearer can help you with the key of the cypher. "my lord falkland by this time hath showed you london from highgate. _if york house were gone, the town were yours_, and all your straitest shackles clean off, besides more comfort than the city air only. the marquis would be exceeding glad the treasurer had it. this i know; yet this you must not know from me. bargain with him presently, upon as good conditions as you can procure, so you have direct motion from the marquis to let him have it. seem not to dive into the secret of it, though you are purblind if you see not through it. i have told mr. meautys how i would wish your lordship now to make an end of it. from him i beseech you take it, and from me only the advice to perform it. if you part not speedily with it, you may defer the good which is approaching near you, and disappointing other aims (which must either shortly receive content or never), perhaps anew yield matter of discontent, though you may be indeed as innocent as before. make the treasurer believe that since the marquis will by no means accept of it, and that you must part with it, you are more willing to pleasure him than anybody else, because you are given to understand my lord marquis so inclines; which inclination, if the treasurer shortly send unto you about it, desire may be more clearly manifested than as yet it hath been; since as i remember none hitherto hath told you _in terminis terminantibus_ that the marquis desires you should gratify the treasurer. i know that way the hare runs, and that my lord marquis longs until cranfield hath it; and so i wish too, for your good; yet would not it were absolutely passed until my lord marquis did send or write unto you to let him have it; for then his so disposing of it were but the next degree removed from the immediate acceptance of it, and your lordship freed from doing it otherwise than to please him, and to comply with his own will and way." it need hardly be said that when cranfield got it, it soon passed into buckingham's hands. "bacon consented to part with his house, and buckingham in return consented to give him his liberty." yet bacon could write to him, "low as i am, i had rather sojourn in a college in cambridge than recover a good fortune by any other but yourself." "as for york house," he bids toby matthews to let buckingham know, "that _whether in a straight line or a compass line_, i meant it for his lordship, in the way which i thought might please him best." but liberty did not mean either money or recovered honour. all his life long he had made light of being in debt; but since his fall this was no longer a condition easy to bear. he had to beg some kind of pension of the king. he had to beg of buckingham; "a small matter for my debts would do me more good now than double a twelvemonth hence. i have lost six thousand by the year, besides caps and courtesies. two things i may assure your lordship. the one, that i shall lead such a course of life as whatsoever the king doth for me shall rather sort to his majesty's and your lordship's honour than to envy; the other, that whatsoever men talk, i can play the good husband, and the king's bounty shall not be lost." it might be supposed from the tone of these applications that bacon's mind was bowed down and crushed by the extremity of his misfortune. nothing could be farther from the truth. in his behaviour during his accusation there was little trace of that high spirit and fortitude shown by far inferior men under like disasters. but the moment the tremendous strain of his misfortunes was taken off, the vigour of his mind recovered itself. the buoyancy of his hopefulness, the elasticity of his energy, are as remarkable as his profound depression. when the end was approaching, his thoughts turned at once to other work to be done, ready in plan, ready to be taken up and finished. at the close of his last desperate letter to the king he cannot resist finishing at once with a jest, and with the prospect of two great literary undertakings-- "this is my last suit which i shall make to your majesty in this business, prostrating myself at your mercy seat, after fifteen years service, wherein i have served your majesty in my poor endeavours with an entire heart, and, as i presumed to say unto your majesty, am still a virgin for matters that concern your person and crown; and now only craving that after eight steps of honour i be not precipitated altogether. but because he that hath taken bribes is apt to give bribes, i will go furder, and present your majesty with a bribe. for if your majesty will give me peace and leisure, and god give me life, i will present your majesty with a good history of england, and a better digest of your laws." the tower did, indeed, to use a word of the time, "mate" him. but the moment he was out of it, his quick and fertile mind was immediately at work in all directions, reaching after all kinds of plans, making proof of all kinds of expedients to retrieve the past, arranging all kinds of work according as events might point out the way. his projects for history, for law, for philosophy, for letters, occupy quite as much of his thoughts as his pardon and his debts; and they, we have seen, occupied a good deal. if he was pusillanimous in the moment of the storm, his spirit, his force, his varied interests, returned the moment the storm was past. his self-reliance, which was boundless, revived. he never allowed himself to think, however men of his own time might judge him, that the future world would mistake him. "_aliquis fui inter vivos_," he writes to gondomar, "_neque omnino intermoriar apud posteros_." even in his time he did not give up the hope of being restored to honour and power. he compared himself to demosthenes, to cicero, to seneca, to marcus livius, who had been condemned for corrupt dealings as he had been, and had all recovered favour and position. lookers-on were puzzled and shocked. "he has," writes chamberlain, "no manner of feeling of his fall, but continuing vain and idle in all his humours as when he was at the highest." "i am said," bacon himself writes, "to have a feather in my head." men were mistaken. his thoughts were, for the moment, more than ever turned to the future; but he had not given up hope of having a good deal to say yet to the affairs of the present. strangely enough, as it seems to us, in the very summer after that fatal spring of the king called for his opinion concerning the reformation of courts of justice; and bacon, just sentenced for corruption and still unpardoned, proceeds to give his advice as if he were a privy councillor in confidential employment. early in the following year he, according to his fashion, surveyed his position, and drew up a paper of memoranda, like the notes of the _commentarius solutus_ of , about points to be urged to the king at an interview. why should not the king employ him again? "your majesty never chid me;" and as to his condemnation, "as the fault was not against your majesty, so my fall was not your act." "therefore," he goes on, "if your majesty do at any time find it fit for your affairs to employ me publicly upon the stage, i shall so live and spend my time as neither discontinuance shall disable me nor adversity shall discourage me, nor anything that i do give any new scandal or envy upon me." he insists very strongly that the king's service never miscarried in his hands, for he simply carried out the king's wise counsels. "that his majesty's business never miscarried in my hands i do not impute to any extraordinary ability in myself, but to my freedom from any particular, either friends or ends, and my careful receipt of his directions, being, as i have formerly said to him, but as a bucket and cistern to that fountain--a bucket to draw forth, a cistern to preserve." he is not afraid of the apparent slight to the censure passed on him by parliament. "for envy, it is an almanack of the old year, and as a friend of mine said, _parliament died penitent towards me_." "what the king bestows on me will be further seen than on paul's steeple." "there be mountebanks, as well in the civil body as in the natural; i ever served his majesty with modesty; no shouting, no undertaking." in the odd fashion of the time--a fashion in which no one more delighted than himself--he lays hold of sacred words to give point to his argument. "i may allude to the three petitions of the litany--_libera nos domine_; _parce nobis, domine_; _exaudi nos, domine_. in the first, i am persuaded that his majesty had a mind to do it, and could not conveniently in respect of his affairs. in the second, he hath done it in my fine and pardon. in the third, he hath likewise performed, in restoring to the light of his countenance." but if the king did not see fit to restore him to public employment, he would be ready to give private counsel; and he would apply himself to any "literary province" that the king appointed. "i am like ground fresh. if i be left to myself i will graze and bear natural philosophy; but if the king will plough me up again, and sow me with anything, i hope to give him some yield." "your majesty hath power; i have faith. therefore a miracle may be wrought." and he proposes, for matters in which his pen might be useful, first, as "active" works, the recompiling of laws; the disposing of wards, and generally the education of youth; the regulation of the jurisdiction of courts; and the regulation of trade; and for "contemplative," the continuation of the history of henry viii.; a general treatise _de legibus et justitia_; and the "holy war" against the ottomans. when he wrote this he had already shown what his unquelled energy could accomplish. in the summer and autumn after his condemnation, amid all the worries and inconveniences of that time, moving about from place to place, without his books, and without free access to papers and records, he had written his _history of henry vii_. the theme had, no doubt, been long in his head. but the book was the first attempt at philosophical history in the language, and it at once takes rank with all that the world had yet seen, in classical times and more recently in italy, of such history. he sent the book, among other persons, to the queen of bohemia, with a phrase, the translation of a trite latin commonplace, which may have been the parent of one which became famous in our time; and with an expression of absolute confidence in the goodness of his own work. "i have read in books that it is accounted a great bliss for a man to have _leisure with honour_. that was never my fortune. for time was, i had honour without leisure; and now i have _leisure without honour_.... but my desire is now to have _leisure without loitering_, and not to become an abbey-lubber, as the old proverb was, but to yield some fruit of my private life.... if king henry were alive again, i hope verily he would not be so angry with me for not flattering him, as well pleased in seeing himself so truly described in colours that will last and be believed." but the tide had turned against him for good. a few fair words, a few grudging doles of money to relieve his pressing wants, and those sometimes intercepted and perhaps never rightly granted from an exchequer which even cranfield's finance could not keep filled, were all the graces that descended upon him from those fountains of goodness in which he professed to trust with such boundless faith. the king did not want him, perhaps did not trust him, perhaps did not really like him. when the _novum organum_ came out, all that he had to say about it was in the shape of a profane jest that "it was like the peace of god--it passed all understanding." other men had the ear of buckingham; shrewd, practical men of business like cranfield, who hated bacon's loose and careless ways, or the clever ecclesiastic williams, whose counsel had steered buckingham safely through the tempest that wrecked bacon, and who, with no legal training, had been placed in bacon's seat. "i thought," said bacon, "that i should have known my successor." williams, for his part, charged bacon with trying to cheat his creditors, when his fine was remitted. with no open quarrel, bacon's relations to buckingham became more ceremonious and guarded; the "my singular good lord" of the former letters becomes, now that buckingham had risen so high and bacon had sunk so low, "excellent lord." the one friend to whom bacon had once wished to owe everything had become the great man, now only to be approached with "sweet meats" and elaborate courtesy. but it was no use. his full pardon bacon did not get, though earnestly suing for it, that he might not "die in ignominy." he never sat again in parliament. the provostship of eton fell vacant, and bacon's hopes were kindled. "it were a pretty cell for my fortune. the college and school i do not doubt but i shall make to flourish." but buckingham had promised it to some nameless follower, and by some process of exchange it went to sir henry wotton. his english history was offered in vain. his digest of the laws was offered in vain. in vain he wrote a memorandum on the regulation of usury; notes of advice to buckingham; elaborate reports and notes of speeches about a war with spain, when that for a while loomed before the country. in vain he affected an interest which he could hardly have felt in the spanish marriage, and the escapade of buckingham and prince charles, which "began," he wrote, "like a fable of the poets, but deserved all in a piece a worthy narration." in vain, when the spanish marriage was off and the french was on, he proposed to offer to buckingham "his service to live a summer as upon mine own delight at paris, to settle a fast intelligence between france and us;" "i have somewhat of the french," he said, "i love birds, as the king doth." public patronage and public employment were at an end for him. his petitions to the king and buckingham ceased to be for office, but for the clearing of his name and for the means of living. it is piteous to read the earnestness of his requests. "help me (dear sovereign lord and master), pity me so far as that i who have borne a bag be not now in my age forced in effect to bear a wallet." the words are from a carefully-prepared and rhetorical letter which was not sent, but they express what he added to a letter presenting the _de augmentis; "det vestra majestas obolum belisario_." again, "i prostrate myself at your majesty's feet; i your ancient servant, now sixty-four years old in age, and three years and five months old in misery. i desire not from your majesty means, nor place, nor employment, but only after so long a time of expiation, a complete and total remission of the sentence of the upper house, to the end that blot of ignominy may be removed from me, and from my memory and posterity, that i die not a condemned man, but may be to your majesty, as i am to god, _nova creatura_." but the pardon never came. sir john bennett, who had been condemned as a corrupt judge by the same parliament, and between whose case and bacon's there was as much difference, "i will not say as between black and white, but as between black and gray," had got his full pardon, "and they say shall sit in parliament." lord suffolk had been one of bacon's judges. "i hope i deserve not to be the only outcast." but whether the court did not care, or whether, as he once suspected, there was some old enemy like coke, who "had a tooth against him," and was watching any favour shown him, he died without his wish being fulfilled, "to live out of want and to die out of ignominy." bacon was undoubtedly an impoverished man, and straitened in his means; but this must be understood as in relation to the rank and position which he still held, and the work which he wanted done for the _instauratio_. his will, dated a few months before his death, shows that it would be a mistake to suppose that he was in penury. he no doubt often wanted ready money, and might be vexed by creditors. but he kept a large household, and was able to live in comfort at gray's inn or at gorhambury. a man who speaks in his will of his "four coach geldings and his best caroache," besides many legacies, and who proposes to found two lectures at the universities, may have troubles about debts and be cramped in his expenditure, but it is only relatively to his station that he can be said to be poor. and to subordinate officers of the treasury who kept him out of his rights, he could still write a sharp letter, full of his old force and edge. a few months before his death he thus wrote to the lord treasurer ley, who probably had made some difficulty about a claim for money: "my lord,--i humbly entreat your lordship, and (if i may use the word) advise your lordship to make me a better answer. your lordship is interested in honour, in the opinion of all that hear how i am dealt with. if your lordship malice me for long's cause, surely it was one of the justest businesses that ever was in chancery. i will avouch it; and how deeply i was tempted therein, your lordship knoweth best. your lordship may do well to think of your grave as i do of mine; and to beware of hardness of heart. and as for fair words, it is a wind by which neither your lordship nor any man else can sail long. howsoever, i am the man that shall give all due respects and reverence to your great place. " th june, . fr. st. alban." bacon always claimed that he was not "vindicative." but considering how bishop williams, when he was lord keeper, had charged bacon with "knavery" and "deceiving his creditors" in the arrangements about his fine, it is not a little strange to find that at the end of his life bacon had so completely made friends with him that he chose him as the person to whom he meant to leave his speeches and letters, which he was "willing should not be lost," and also the charge of superintending two foundations of £ a year for natural science at the universities. and the bishop accepted the charge. the end of this, one of the most pathetic of histories, was at hand; the end was not the less pathetic because it came in so homely a fashion. on a cold day in march he stopped his coach in the snow on his way to highgate, to try the effect of cold in arresting putrefaction. he bought a hen from a woman by the way, and stuffed it with snow. he was taken with a bad chill, which forced him to stop at a strange house, lord arundel's, to whom he wrote his last letter--a letter of apology for using his house. he did not write the letter as a dying man. but disease had fastened on him. a few days after, early on easter morning, april , , he passed away. he was buried at st. albans, in the church of st. michael, "the only christian church within the walls of old verulam." "for my name and memory," he said in his will, "i leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages." so he died: the brightest, richest, largest mind but one, in the age which had seen shakespeare and his fellows; so bright and rich and large that there have been found those who identify him with the writer of _hamlet_ and _othello_. that is idle. bacon could no more have written the plays than shakespeare could have prophesied the triumphs of natural philosophy. so ended a career, than which no other in his time had grander and nobler aims--aims, however mistaken, for the greatness and good of england; aims for the enlargement of knowledge and truth, and for the benefit of mankind. so ended a career which had mounted slowly and painfully, but resolutely, to the highest pinnacle of greatness--greatness full of honour and beneficent activity--suddenly to plunge down to depths where honour and hope were irrecoverable. so closed, in disgrace and disappointment and neglect, the last sad chapter of a life which had begun so brightly, which had achieved such permanent triumphs, which had lost itself so often in the tangles of insincerity and evil custom, which was disfigured and marred by great misfortunes, and still more by great mistakes of his own, which was in many ways misunderstood not only by his generation but by himself, but which he left in the constant and almost unaccountable faith that it would be understood and greatly honoured by posterity. with all its glories, it was the greatest shipwreck, the greatest tragedy, of an age which saw many. but in these gloomy and dreary days of depression and vain hope to which his letters bear witness--"three years and five months old in misery," again later, "a long cleansing week of five years' expiation and more"--his interest in his great undertaking and his industry never flagged. the king did not want what he offered, did not want his histories, did not want his help about law. well, then, he had work of his own on which his heart was set; and if the king did not want his time, he had the more for himself. even in the busy days of his chancellorship he had prepared and carried through the press the _novum organum_, which he published on the very eve of his fall. it was one of those works which quicken a man's powers, and prove to him what he can do; and it had its effect. his mind was never more alert than in these years of adversity, his labour never more indefatigable, his powers of expression never more keen and versatile and strong. besides the political writings of grave argument for which he found time, these five years teem with the results of work. in the year before his death he sketched out once more, in a letter to a venetian correspondent, fra fulgenzio, the friend of sarpi, the plan of his great work, on which he was still busy, though with fast diminishing hopes of seeing it finished. to another foreign correspondent, a professor of philosophy at annecy, and a distinguished mathematician, father baranzan, who had raised some questions about bacon's method, and had asked what was to be done with metaphysics, he wrote in eager acknowledgment of the interest which his writings had excited, and insisting on the paramount necessity, above everything, of the observation of facts and of natural history, out of which philosophy may be built. but the most comprehensive view of his intellectual projects in all directions, "the fullest account of his own personal feelings and designs as a writer which we have from his own pen," is given in a letter to the venerable friend of his early days, bishop andrewes, who died a few months after him. part, he says, of his _instauratio_, "the work in mine own judgement (_si nunquam fallit imago_) i do most esteem," has been published; but because he "doubts that it flies too high over men's heads," he proposes "to draw it down to the sense" by examples of natural history. he has enlarged and translated the _advancement_ into the _de augmentis_. "because he could not altogether desert the civil person that he had borne," he had begun a work on laws, intermediate between philosophical jurisprudence and technical law. he had hoped to compile a digest of english law, but found it more than he could do alone, and had laid it aside. the _instauratio_ had contemplated the good of men "in the dowries of nature;" the _laws_, their good "in society and the dowries of government." as he owed duty to his country, and could no longer do it service, he meant to do it honour by his history of henry vii. his _essays_ were but "recreations;" and remembering that all his writings had hitherto "gone all into the city and none into the temple," he wished to make "some poor oblation," and therefore had chosen an argument mixed of religious and civil considerations, the dialogue of "an holy war" against the ottoman, which he never finished, but which he intended to dedicate to andrewes, "in respect of our ancient and private acquaintance, and because amongst the men of our times i hold you in special reverence." the question naturally presents itself, in regard to a friend of bishop andrewes, what was bacon as regards religion? and the answer, it seems to me, can admit of no doubt. the obvious and superficial thing to say is that his religion was but an official one, a tribute to custom and opinion. but it was not so. both in his philosophical thinking, and in the feelings of his mind in the various accidents and occasions of life, bacon was a religious man, with a serious and genuine religion. his sense of the truth and greatness of religion was as real as his sense of the truth and greatness of nature; they were interlaced together, and could not be separated, though they were to be studied separately and independently. the call, repeated through all his works from the earliest to the last, _da fidel quæ fidel sunt_, was a warning against confusing the two, but was an earnest recognition of the claims of each. the solemn religious words in which his prefaces and general statements often wind up with thanksgiving and hope and prayer, are no mere words of course; they breathe the spirit of the deepest conviction. it is true that he takes the religion of christendom as he finds it. the grounds of belief, the relation of faith to reason, the profounder inquiries into the basis of man's knowledge of the eternal and invisible, are out of the circle within which he works. what we now call the philosophy of religion is absent from his writings. in truth, his mind was not qualified to grapple with such questions. there is no sign in his writings that he ever tried his strength against them; that he ever cared to go below the surface into the hidden things of mind, and what mind deals with above and beyond sense--those metaphysical difficulties and depths, as we call them, which there is no escaping, and which are as hard to explore and as dangerous to mistake as the forces and combinations of external nature. but it does not follow, because he had not asked all the questions that others have asked, that he had not thought out his reasonable faith. his religion was not one of mere vague sentiment: it was the result of reflection and deliberate judgment. it was the discriminating and intelligent church of england religion of hooker and andrewes, which had gone back to something deeper and nobler in christianity than the popular calvinism of the earlier reformation; and though sternly hostile to the system of the papacy, both on religious and political grounds, attempted to judge it with knowledge and justice. this deliberate character of his belief is shown in the remarkable confession of faith which he left behind him: a closely-reasoned and nobly-expressed survey of christian theology--"a _summa theologiæ_, digested into seven pages of the finest english of the days when its tones were finest." "the entire scheme of christian theology," as mr. spedding says, "is constantly in his thoughts; underlies everything; defines for him the limits of human speculation; and, as often as the course of inquiry touches at any point the boundary line, never fails to present itself. there is hardly any occasion or any kind of argument into which it does not at one time or another incidentally introduce itself." doubtless it was a religion which in him was compatible, as it has been in others, with grave faults of temperament and character. but it is impossible to doubt that it was honest, that it elevated his thoughts, that it was a refuge and stay in the times of trouble. chapter viii. bacon's philosophy. bacon was one of those men to whom posterity forgives a great deal for the greatness of what he has done and attempted for posterity. it is idle, unless all honest judgment is foregone, to disguise the many deplorable shortcomings of his life; it is unjust to have one measure for him, and another for those about him and opposed to him. but it is not too much to say that in temper, in honesty, in labour, in humility, in reverence, he was the most perfect example that the world had yet seen of the student of nature, the enthusiast for knowledge. that such a man was tempted and fell, and suffered the nemesis of his fall, is an instance of the awful truth embodied in the tragedy of _faust_. but his genuine devotion, so unwearied and so paramount, to a great idea and a great purpose for the good of all generations to come, must shield him from the insult of pope's famous and shallow epigram. whatever may have been his sins, and they were many, he cannot have been the "meanest of mankind," who lived and died, holding unaltered, amid temptations and falls, so noble a conception of the use and calling of his life: the duty and service of helping his brethren to know as they had never yet learned to know. that thought never left him; the obligations it imposed were never forgotten in the crush and heat of business; the toils, thankless at the time, which it heaped upon him in addition to the burdens of public life were never refused. nothing diverted him, nothing made him despair. he was not discouraged because he was not understood. there never was any one in whose life the "_souveraineté du but_" was more certain and more apparent; and that object was the second greatest that man can have. to teach men to know is only next to making them good. the baconian philosophy, the reforms of the _novum organum_, the method of experiment and induction, are commonplaces, and sometimes lead to a misconception of what bacon did. bacon is, and is not, the founder of modern science. what bacon believed could be done, what he hoped and divined, for the correction and development of human knowledge, was one thing; what his methods were, and how far they were successful, is another. it would hardly be untrue to say that though bacon is the parent of modern science, his methods contributed nothing to its actual discoveries; neither by possibility could they have done so. the great and wonderful work which the world owes to him was in the idea, and not in the execution. the idea was that the systematic and wide examination of facts was the first thing to be done in science, and that till this had been done faithfully and impartially, with all the appliances and all the safeguards that experience and forethought could suggest, all generalisations, all anticipations from mere reasoning, must be adjourned and postponed; and further, that sought on these conditions, knowledge, certain and fruitful, beyond all that men then imagined, could be attained. his was the faith of the discoverer, the imagination of the poet, the voice of the prophet. but his was not the warrior's arm, the engineer's skill, the architect's creativeness. "i only sound the clarion," he says, "but i enter not into the battle;" and with a greek quotation very rare with him, he compares himself to one of homer's peaceful heralds, [greek: chairete kêrukes, dios angeloi êde kai andrôn]. even he knew not the full greatness of his own enterprise. he underrated the vastness and the subtlety of nature. he overrated his own appliances to bring it under his command. he had not that incommunicable genius and instinct of the investigator which in such men as faraday close hand to hand with phenomena. his weapons and instruments wanted precision; they were powerful up to a certain point, but they had the clumsiness of an unpractised time. cowley compared him to moses on pisgah surveying the promised land; it was but a distant survey, and newton was the joshua who began to take possession of it. the idea of the great enterprise, in its essential outline, and with a full sense of its originality and importance, was early formed, and was even sketched on paper with bacon's characteristic self-reliance when he was but twenty-five. looking back, in a letter written in the last year of his life, on the ardour and constancy with which he had clung to his faith--"in that purpose my mind never waxed old; in that long interval of time it never cooled"--he remarks that it was then "forty years since he put together a youthful essay on these matters, which with vast confidence i called by the high-sounding title, the greatest birth of time." "the greatest birth of time," whatever it was, has perished, though the name, altered to "partus temporis _masculus_" has survived, attached to some fragments of uncertain date and arrangement. but in very truth the child was born, and, as bacon says, for forty years grew and developed, with many changes yet the same. bacon was most tenacious, not only of ideas, but even of the phrases, images, and turns of speech in which they had once flashed on him and taken shape in his mind. the features of his undertaking remained the same from first to last, only expanded and enlarged as time went on and experience widened; his conviction that the knowledge of nature, and with it the power to command and to employ nature, were within the capacity of mankind and might be restored to them; the certainty that of this knowledge men had as yet acquired but the most insignificant part, and that all existing claims to philosophical truth were as idle and precarious as the guesses and traditions of the vulgar; his belief that no greater object could be aimed at than to sweep away once and for ever all this sham knowledge and all that supported it, and to lay an entirely new and clear foundation to build on for the future; his assurance that, as it was easy to point out with fatal and luminous certainty the rottenness and hollowness of all existing knowledge and philosophy, so it was equally easy to devise and practically apply new and natural methods of investigation and construction, which should replace it by knowledge of infallible truth and boundless fruitfulness. his object--to gain the key to the interpretation of nature; his method--to gain it, not by the means common to all previous schools of philosophy, by untested reasonings and imposing and high-sounding generalisations, but by a series and scale of rigorously verified inductions, starting from the lowest facts of experience to discoveries which should prove and realise themselves by leading deductively to practical results--these, in one form or another, were the theme of his philosophical writings from the earliest sight of them that we gain. he had disclosed what was in his mind in the letter to lord burghley, written when he was thirty-one ( / ), in which he announced that he had "taken all knowledge for his province," to "purge it of 'frivolous disputations' and 'blind experiments,' and that whatever happened to him, he meant to be a 'true pioneer in the mine of truth.'" but the first public step in the opening of his great design was the publication in the autumn of of the _advancement of learning_, a careful and balanced report on the existing stock and deficiencies of human knowledge. his endeavours, as he says in the _advancement_ itself, are "but as an image in a cross-way, that may point out the way, but cannot go it." but from this image of his purpose, his thoughts greatly widened as time went on. the _advancement_, in part at least, was probably a hurried work. it shadowed out, but only shadowed out, the lines of his proposed reform of philosophical thought; it showed his dissatisfaction with much that was held to be sound and complete, and showed the direction of his ideas and hopes. but it was many years before he took a further step. active life intervened. in , at the height of his prosperity, on the eve of his fall, he published the long meditated _novum organum_, the avowed challenge to the old philosophies, the engine and instrument of thought and discovery which was to put to shame and supersede all others, containing, in part at least, the principles of that new method of the use of experience which was to be the key to the interpretation and command of nature, and, together with the method, an elaborate but incomplete exemplification of its leading processes. here were summed up, and stated with the most solemn earnestness, the conclusions to which long study and continual familiarity with the matters in question had led him. and with the _novum organum_ was at length disclosed, though only in outline, the whole of the vast scheme in all its parts, object, method, materials, results, for the "instauration" of human knowledge, the restoration of powers lost, disused, neglected, latent, but recoverable by honesty, patience, courage, and industry. the _instauratio_, as he planned the work, "is to be divided," says mr. ellis, "into six portions, of which the _first_ is to contain a general survey of the present state of knowledge. in the _second_, men are to be taught how to use their understanding aright in the investigation of nature. in the _third_, all the phenomena of the universe are to be stored up as in a treasure-house, as the materials on which the new method is to be employed. in the _fourth_, examples are to be given of its operation and of the results to which it leads. the _fifth_ is to contain what bacon had accomplished in natural philosophy _without_ the aid of his own method, _ex eodem intellectûs usu quem alii in inquirendo et inveniendo adhibere consueverunt_. it is therefore less important than the rest, and bacon declares that he will not bind himself to the conclusions which it contains. moreover, its value will altogether cease when the _sixth_ part can be completed, wherein will be set forth the new philosophy--the results of the application of the new method to all the phenomena of the universe. but to complete this, the last part of the _instauratio_, bacon does not hope; he speaks of it as a thing, _et supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata_."--_works_, i. . the _novum organum_, itself imperfect, was the crown of all that he lived to do. it was followed ( ) by the publication, intended to be periodical, of materials for the new philosophy to work upon, particular sections and classes of observations on phenomena--the _history of the winds_, the _history of life and death_. others were partly prepared but not published by him. and finally, in , he brought out in latin a greatly enlarged recasting of the _advancement_; the nine books of the "_de augmentis_." but the great scheme was not completed; portions were left more or less finished. much that he purposed was left undone, and could not have been yet done at that time. but the works which he published represent imperfectly the labour spent on the undertaking. besides these there remains a vast amount of unused or rejected work, which shows how it was thought out, rearranged, tried first in one fashion and then in another, recast, developed. separate chapters, introductions, "experimental essays and discarded beginnings," treatises with picturesque and imaginative titles, succeeded one another in that busy work-shop; and these first drafts and tentative essays have in them some of the freshest and most felicitous forms of his thoughts. at one time his enterprise, connecting itself with his own life and mission, rose before his imagination and kindled his feelings, and embodied itself in the lofty and stately "proem" already quoted. his quick and brilliant imagination saw shadows and figures of his ideas in the ancient mythology, which he worked out with curious ingenuity and often much poetry in his _wisdom of the ancients_. towards the end of his life he began to embody his thoughts and plans in a philosophical tale, which he did not finish--the _new atlantis_--a charming example of his graceful fancy and of his power of easy and natural story-telling. between the _advancement_ and the _novum organum_ ( - ) much underground work had been done. "he had finally (about ) settled the plan of the _great instauration_, and began to call it by that name." the plan, first in three or four divisions, had been finally digested into six. vague outlines had become definite and clear. distinct portions had been worked out. various modes of treatment had been tried, abandoned, modified. prefaces were written to give the sketch and purpose of chapters not yet composed. the _novum organum_ had been written and rewritten twelve times over. bacon kept his papers, and we can trace in the unused portion of those left behind him much of the progress of his work, and the shapes which much of it went through. the _advancement_ itself is the filling-out and perfecting of what is found in germ, meagre and rudimentary, in a _discourse in praise of knowledge_, written in the days of elizabeth, and in some latin chapters of an early date, the _cogitationes de scientia humana_, on the limits and use of knowledge, and on the relation of natural history to natural philosophy. these early essays, with much of the same characteristic illustration, and many of the favourite images and maxims and texts and phrases, which continue to appear in his writings to the end, contain the thoughts of a man long accustomed to meditate and to see his way on the new aspects of knowledge opening upon him. and before the _advancement_ he had already tried his hand on a work intended to be in two books, which mr. ellis describes as a "great work on the interpretation of nature," the "earliest type of the _instauratio_," and which bacon called by the enigmatical name of _valerius terminus_. in it, as in a second draft, which in its turn was superseded by the _advancement_, the line of thought of the latin _cogitationes_ reappears, expanded and more carefully ordered; it contains also the first sketch of his certain and infallible method for what he calls the "freeing of the direction" in the search after truth, and the first indications of the four classes of "idols" which were to be so memorable a portion of bacon's teaching. and between the _advancement_ and the _novum organum_ at least one unpublished treatise of great interest intervened, the _visa et cogitata_, on which he was long employed, and which he brought to a finished shape, fit to be submitted to his friends and critics, sir thomas bodley and bishop andrewes. it is spoken of as a book to be "imparted _sicut videbitur_," in the review which he made of his life and objects soon after he was made solicitor in . a number of fragments also bear witness to the fierce scorn and wrath which possessed him against the older and the received philosophies. he tried his hand at declamatory onslaughts on the leaders of human wisdom, from the early greeks and aristotle down to the latest "novellists;" and he certainly succeeded in being magnificently abusive. but he thought wisely that this was not the best way of doing what in the _commentarius solutus_ he calls on himself to do--"taking a greater confidence and authority in discourses of this nature, _tanquam sui certus et de alto despiciens_;" and the rhetorical _redargutio philosophiarum_ and writings of kindred nature were laid aside by his more serious judgment. but all these fragments witness to the immense and unwearied labour bestowed in the midst of a busy life on his undertaking; they suggest, too, the suspicion that there was much waste from interruption, and the doubt whether his work would not have been better if it could have been more steadily continuous. but if ever a man had a great object in life, and pursued it through good and evil report, through ardent hope and keen disappointment, to the end, with unwearied patience and unshaken faith, it was bacon, when he sought the improvement of human knowledge "for the glory of god and the relief of man's estate." it is not the least part of the pathetic fortune of his life that his own success was so imperfect. when a reader first comes from the vague, popular notions of bacon's work to his definite proposals the effect is startling. every one has heard that he contemplated a complete reform of the existing conceptions of human knowledge, and of the methods by which knowledge was to be sought; that rejecting them as vitiated, by the loose and untested way in which they had been formed, he called men from verbal generalisations and unproved assumptions to come down face to face with the realities of experience; that he substituted for formal reasoning, from baseless premises and unmeaning principles, a methodical system of cautious and sifting inference from wide observation and experiment; and that he thus opened the path which modern science thenceforth followed, with its amazing and unexhausted discoveries, and its vast and beneficent practical results. we credit all this to bacon, and assuredly not without reason. all this is what was embraced in his vision of a changed world of thought and achievement. all this is what was meant by that _regnum hominis_, which, with a play on sacred words which his age did not shrink from, and which he especially pleased himself with, marked the coming of that hitherto unimagined empire of man over the powers and forces which encompassed him. but the detail of all this is multifarious and complicated, and is not always what we expect; and when we come to see how his work is estimated by those who, by greatest familiarity with scientific ideas and the history of scientific inquiries, are best fitted to judge of it, many a surprise awaits us. for we find that the greatest differences of opinion exist on the value of what he did. not only very unfavourable judgments have been passed upon it, on general grounds--as an irreligious, or a shallow and one-sided, or a poor and "utilitarian" philosophy, and on a definite comparison of it with the actual methods and processes which as a matter of history have been the real means of scientific discovery--but also some of those who have most admired his genius, and with the deepest love and reverence have spared no pains to do it full justice, have yet come to the conclusion that as an instrument and real method of work bacon's attempt was a failure. it is not only de maistre and lord macaulay who dispute his philosophical eminence. it is not only the depreciating opinion of a contemporary like harvey, who was actually doing what bacon was writing about. it is not only that men who after the long history of modern science have won their place among its leaders, and are familiar by daily experience with the ways in which it works--a chemist like liebig, a physiologist like claude bernard--say that they can find nothing to help them in bacon's methods. it is not only that a clear and exact critic like m. de rémusat looks at his attempt, with its success and failure, as characteristic of english, massive, practical good sense rather than as marked by real philosophical depth and refinement, such as continental thinkers point to and are proud of in descartes and leibnitz. it is not even that a competent master of the whole domain of knowledge, whewell, filled with the deepest sense of all that the world owes to bacon, takes for granted that "though bacon's general maxims are sagacious and animating, his particular precepts failed in his hands, and are now practically useless;" and assuming that bacon's method is not the right one, and not complete as far as the progress of science up to his time could direct it, proceeds to construct a _novum organum renovatum_. but bacon's writings have recently undergone the closest examination by two editors, whose care for his memory is as loyal and affectionate as their capacity is undoubted, and their willingness to take trouble boundless. and mr. ellis and mr. spedding, with all their interest in every detail of bacon's work, and admiration of the way in which he performed it, make no secret of their conclusion that he failed in the very thing on which he was most bent--the discovery of practical and fruitful ways of scientific inquiry. "bacon," says mr. spedding, "failed to devise a practicable method for the discovery of the forms of nature, because he misconceived the conditions of the case.... for the same reason he failed to make any single discovery which holds its place as one of the steps by which science has in any direction really advanced. the clew with which he entered the labyrinth did not reach far enough; before he had nearly attained his end he was obliged either to come back or to go on without it." "his peculiar system of philosophy," says mr. spedding in another preface, "that is to say, the peculiar method of investigation, the "_organum_," the "_formula_," the "_clavis_," the "_ars ipsa interpretandi naturam_," the "_filum labyrinthi_," or by whatever of its many names we choose to call that artificial process by which alone he believed man could attain a knowledge of the laws and a command over the powers of nature--_of this philosophy we can make nothing_. if we have not tried it, it is because we feel confident that it would not answer. we regard it as a curious piece of machinery, very subtle, elaborate, and ingenious, but not worth constructing, because all the work it could do may be done more easily another way."--_works_, iii. . what his method really was is itself a matter of question. mr. ellis speaks of it as a matter "but imperfectly apprehended." he differs from his fellow-labourer mr. spedding, in what he supposes to be its central and characteristic innovation. mr. ellis finds it in an improvement and perfection of logical machinery. mr. spedding finds it in the formation of a great "natural and experimental history," a vast collection of facts in every department of nature, which was to be a more important part of his philosophy than the _novum organum_ itself. both of them think that as he went on, the difficulties of the work grew upon him, and caused alterations in his plans, and we are reminded that "there is no didactic exposition of his method in the whole of his writings," and that "this has not been sufficiently remarked by those who have spoken of his philosophy." in the first place, the kind of intellectual instrument which he proposed to construct was a mistake. his great object was to place the human mind "on a level with things and nature" (_ut faciamus intellectum humanum rebus et naturæ parem_), and this could only be done by a revolution in methods. the ancients had all that genius could do for man; but it was a matter, he said, not of the strength and fleetness of the running, but of the rightness of the way. it was a new method, absolutely different from anything known, which he proposed to the world, and which should lead men to knowledge, with the certainty and with the impartial facility of a high-road. the induction which he imagined to himself as the contrast to all that had yet been tried was to have two qualities. it was to end, by no very prolonged or difficult processes, in absolute certainty. and next, it was to leave very little to the differences of intellectual power: it was to level minds and capacities. it was to give all men the same sort of power which a pair of compasses gives the hand in drawing a circle. "_absolute certainty, and a mechanical mode of procedure_" says mr. ellis, "_such that all men should be capable of employing it, are the two great features of the baconian system_." this he thought possible, and this he set himself to expound--"a method universally applicable, and in all cases infallible." in this he saw the novelty and the vast importance of his discovery. "by this method all the knowledge which the human mind was capable of receiving might be attained, and attained without unnecessary labour." it was a method of "a demonstrative character, with the power of reducing all minds to nearly the same level." the conception, indeed, of a "great art of knowledge," of an "instauration" of the sciences, of a "clavis" which should unlock the difficulties which had hindered discovery, was not a new one. this attempt at a method which should be certain, which should level capacities, which should do its work in a short time, had a special attraction for the imagination of the wild spirits of the south, from raimond lulli in the thirteenth century to the audacious calabrians of the sixteenth. with bacon it was something much more serious and reasonable and business-like. but such a claim has never yet been verified; there is no reason to think that it ever can be; and to have made it shows a fundamental defect in bacon's conception of the possibilities of the human mind and the field it has to work in. in the next place, though the prominence which he gave to the doctrine of induction was one of those novelties which are so obvious after the event, though so strange before it, and was undoubtedly the element in his system which gave it life and power and influence on the course of human thought and discovery, his account of induction was far from complete and satisfactory. without troubling himself about the theory of induction, as de rémusat has pointed out, he contented himself with applying to its use the precepts of common-sense and a sagacious perception of the circumstances in which it was to be employed. but even these precepts, notable as they were, wanted distinctness, and the qualities needed for working rules. the change is great when in fifty years we pass from the poetical science of bacon to the mathematical and precise science of newton. his own time may well have been struck by the originality and comprehensiveness of such a discriminating arrangement of proofs as the "prerogative instances" of the _novum organum_, so natural and real, yet never before thus compared and systematized. but there is a great interval between his method of experimenting, his "_hunt of pan_"--the three tables of instances, "_presence_," "_absence_" and "_degrees, or comparisons_," leading to a process of sifting and exclusion, and to the _first vintage_, or beginnings of theory--and say, for instance, mill's four methods of experimental inquiry: the method of _agreement_, of _differences_, of _residues_, and of _concomitant variations_. the course which he marked out so laboriously and so ingeniously for induction to follow was one which was found to be impracticable, and as barren of results as those deductive philosophies on which he lavished his scorn. he has left precepts and examples of what he meant by his cross-examining and sifting processes. as admonitions to cross-examine and to sift facts and phenomena they are valuable. many of the observations and classifications are subtle and instructive. but in his hands nothing comes of them. they lead at the utmost to mere negative conclusions; they show what a thing is not. but his attempt to elicit anything positive out of them breaks down, or ends at best in divinations and guesses, sometimes--as in connecting heat and motion--very near to later and more carefully-grounded theories, but always unverified. he had a radically false and mechanical conception, though in words he earnestly disclaims it, of the way to deal with the facts of nature. he looked on them as things which told their own story, and suggested the questions which ought to be put to them; and with this idea half his time was spent in collecting huge masses of indigested facts of the most various authenticity and value, and he thought he was collecting materials which his method had only to touch in order to bring forth from them light and truth and power. he thought that, not in certain sciences, but in all, one set of men could do the observing and collecting, and another be set on the work of induction and the discovery of "axioms." doubtless in the arrangement and sorting of them his versatile and ingenious mind gave itself full play; he divides and distinguishes them into their companies and groups, different kinds of motion, "prerogative" instances, with their long tale of imaginative titles. but we look in vain for any use that he was able to make of them, or even to suggest. bacon never adequately realised that no promiscuous assemblage of even the most certain facts could ever lead to knowledge, could ever suggest their own interpretation, without the action on them of the living mind, without the initiative of an idea. in truth he was so afraid of assumptions and "anticipations" and prejudices--his great bugbear was so much the "_intellectus sibi permissus_" the mind given liberty to guess and imagine and theorise, instead of, as it ought, absolutely and servilely submitting itself to the control of facts--that he missed the true place of the rational and formative element in his account of induction. he does tell us, indeed, that "truth emerges sooner from error than from confusion." he indulges the mind, in the course of its investigation of "instances," with a first "vintage" of provisional generalisations. but of the way in which the living mind of the discoverer works, with its ideas and insight, and thoughts that come no one knows whence, working hand in hand with what comes before the eye or is tested by the instrument, he gives us no picture. compare his elaborate investigation of the "form of heat" in the _novum organum_, with such a record of real inquiry as wells's _treatise on dew_, or herschel's analysis of it in his _introduction to natural philosophy_. and of the difference of genius between a faraday or a newton, and the crowd of average men who have used and finished off their work, he takes no account. indeed, he thinks that for the future such difference is to disappear. "that his method is impracticable," says mr. ellis, "cannot, i think, be denied, if we reflect not only that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it. in all cases this process involves an element to which nothing corresponds in the tables of 'comparence' and 'exclusion,' namely, the application to the facts of observation of a principle of arrangement, an idea, existing in the mind of the discoverer antecedently to the act of induction. it may be said that this idea is precisely one of the _naturæ_ into which the facts of observation ought in bacon's system to be analysed. and this is in one sense true; but it must be added that this analysis, if it be thought right so to call it, is of the essence of the discovery which results from it. in most cases the act of induction follows as a matter of course as soon as the appropriate idea has been introduced."--ellis, _general preface_, i. . lastly, not only was bacon's conception of philosophy so narrow as to exclude one of its greatest domains; for, says mr. ellis, "it cannot be denied that to bacon all sound philosophy seemed to be included in what we now call the natural sciences," and in all its parts was claimed as the subject of his inductive method; but bacon's scientific knowledge and scientific conceptions were often very imperfect--more imperfect than they ought to have been for his time. of one large part of science, which was just then beginning to be cultivated with high promise of success--the knowledge of the heavens--he speaks with a coldness and suspicion which contrasts remarkably with his eagerness about things belonging to the sphere of the earth and within reach of the senses. he holds, of course, the unity of the world; the laws of the whole visible universe are one order; but the heavens, wonderful as they are to him, are--compared with other things--out of his track of inquiry. he had his astronomical theories; he expounded them in his "_descriptio globi intellectualis_" and his _thema coeli_ he was not altogether ignorant of what was going on in days when copernicus, kepler, and galileo were at work. but he did not know how to deal with it, and there were men in england, before and then, who understood much better than he the problems and the methods of astronomy. he had one conspicuous and strange defect for a man who undertook what he did. he was not a mathematician: he did not see the indispensable necessity of mathematics in the great _instauration_ which he projected; he did not much believe in what they could do. he cared so little about them that he takes no notice of napier's invention of logarithms. he was not able to trace how the direct information of the senses might be rightly subordinated to the rational, but not self-evident results of geometry and arithmetic. he was impatient of the subtleties of astronomical calculations; they only attempted to satisfy problems about the motion of bodies in the sky, and told us nothing of physical fact; they gave us, as prometheus gave to jove, the outside skin of the offering, which was stuffed inside with straw and rubbish. he entirely failed to see that before dealing with physical astronomy, it must be dealt with mathematically. "it is well to remark," as mr. ellis says, "that none of newton's astronomical discoveries could have been made if astronomers had not continued to render themselves liable to bacon's censure." bacon little thought that in navigation the compass itself would become a subordinate instrument compared with the helps given by mathematical astronomy. in this, and in other ways, bacon rose above his time in his conceptions of what _might be_, but not of what _was_; the list is a long one, as given by mr. spedding (iii. ), of the instances which show that he was ill-informed about the advances of knowledge in his own time. and his mind was often not clear when he came to deal with complex phenomena. thus, though he constructed a table of specific gravities--"the only collection," says mr. ellis, "of quantitative experiments that we find in his works," and "wonderfully accurate considering the manner in which they were obtained;" yet he failed to understand the real nature of the famous experiment of archimedes. and so with the larger features of his teaching it is impossible not to feel how imperfectly he had emancipated himself from the power of words and of common prepossessions; how for one reason or another he had failed to call himself to account in the terms he employed, and the assumptions on which he argued. the caution does not seem to have occurred to him that the statement of a fact may, in nine cases out of ten, involve a theory. his whole doctrine of "forms" and "simple natures," which is so prominent in his method of investigation, is an example of loose and slovenly use of unexamined and untested ideas. he allowed himself to think that it would be possible to arrive at an alphabet of nature, which, once attained, would suffice to spell out and constitute all its infinite combinations. he accepted, without thinking it worth a doubt, the doctrine of appetites and passions and inclinations and dislikes and horrors in inorganic nature. his whole physiology of life and death depends on a doctrine of animal spirits, of which he traces the operations and qualities as if they were as certain as the nerves or the blood, and of which he gives this account--"that in every tangible body there is a spirit covered and enveloped in the grosser body;" "not a virtue, not an energy, not an actuality, nor any such idle matter, but a body thin and invisible, and yet having place and dimension, and real." ... "a middle nature between flame, which is momentary, and air which is permanent." yet these are the very things for which he holds up aristotle and the scholastics and the italian speculators to reprobation and scorn. the clearness of his thinking was often overlaid by the immense profusion of decorative material which his meditation brought along with it. the defect was greater than that which even his ablest defenders admit. it was more than that in that "greatest and radical difference, which he himself observes" between minds, the difference between minds which were apt to note _distinctions_, and those which were apt to note _likenesses_, he was, without knowing it, defective in the first. it was that in many instances he exemplified in his own work the very faults which he charged on the older philosophies: haste, carelessness, precipitancy, using words without thinking them out, assuming to know when he ought to have perceived his real ignorance. what, then, with all these mistakes and failures, not always creditable or pardonable, has given bacon his preeminent place in the history of science? . the answer is that with all his mistakes and failures, the principles on which his mode of attaining a knowledge of nature was based were the only true ones; and they had never before been propounded so systematically, so fully, and so earnestly. his was not the first mind on whom these principles had broken. men were, and had been for some time, pursuing their inquiries into various departments of nature precisely on the general plan of careful and honest observation of real things which he enjoined. they had seen, as he saw, the futility of all attempts at natural philosophy by mere thinking and arguing, without coming into contact with the contradictions or corrections or verifications of experience. in italy, in germany, in england there were laborious and successful workers, who had long felt that to be in touch with nature was the only way to know. but no one had yet come before the world to proclaim this on the house-tops, as the key of the only certain path to the secrets of nature, the watchword of a revolution in the methods of interpreting her; and this bacon did with an imposing authority and power which enforced attention. he spoke the thoughts of patient toilers like harvey with a largeness and richness which they could not command, and which they perhaps smiled at. he disentangled and spoke the vague thoughts of his age, which other men had not the courage and clearness of mind to formulate. what bacon _did_, indeed, and what he _meant_, are separate matters. he _meant_ an infallible method by which man should be fully equipped for a struggle with nature; he meant an irresistible and immediate conquest, within a definite and not distant time. it was too much. he himself saw no more of what he _meant_ than columbus did of america. but what he _did_ was to persuade men for the future that the intelligent, patient, persevering cross-examination of things, and the thoughts about them, was the only, and was the successful road to know. no one had yet done this, and he did it. his writings were a public recognition of real science, in its humblest tasks about the commonplace facts before our feet, as well as in its loftiest achievements. "the man who is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle," says dr. johnson, "wonders to see the world engaged in the prattle about peace and war," and the world was ready to smile at the simplicity or the impertinence of his enthusiasm. bacon impressed upon the world for good, with every resource of subtle observation and forcible statement, that "the man who is growing great by electrifying a bottle" is as important a person in the world's affairs as the arbiter of peace and war. . yet this is not all. an inferior man might have made himself the mouthpiece of the hopes and aspirations of his generation after a larger science. but to bacon these aspirations embodied themselves in the form of a great and absorbing idea; an idea which took possession of the whole man, kindling in him a faith which nothing could quench, and a passion which nothing could dull; an idea which, for forty years, was his daily companion, his daily delight, his daily business; an idea which he was never tired of placing in ever fresh and more attractive lights, from which no trouble could wean him, about which no disaster could make him despair; an idea round which the instincts and intuitions and obstinate convictions of genius gathered, which kindled his rich imagination and was invested by it with a splendour and magnificence like the dreams of fable. it is this idea which finds its fitting expression in the grand and stately aphorisms of the _novum organum_, in the varied fields of interest in the _de augmentis_, in the romance of the _new atlantis_. it is this idea, this certainty of a new unexplored kingdom of knowledge within the reach and grasp of man, if he will be humble enough and patient enough and truthful enough to occupy it--this announcement not only of a new system of thought, but of a change in the condition of the world--a prize and possession such as man had not yet imagined; this belief in the fortunes of the human race and its issue, "such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined," yet more than verified in the wonders which our eyes have seen--it is this which gives its prerogative to bacon's work. that he bungled about the processes of induction, that he talked about an unintelligible doctrine of _forms_, did not affect the weight and solemnity of his call to learn, so full of wisdom and good-sense, so sober and so solid, yet so audaciously confident. there had been nothing like it in its ardour of hope, in the glory which it threw around the investigation of nature. it was the presence and the power of a great idea--long become a commonplace to us, but strange and perplexing at first to his own generation, which probably shared coke's opinion that it qualified its champion for a place in the company of the "ship of fools," which expressed its opinion of the man who wrote the _novum organum_, in the sentiment that "a fool _could_ not have written it, and a wise man _would_ not"--it is this which has placed bacon among the great discoverers of the human race. it is this imaginative yet serious assertion of the vast range and possibilities of human knowledge which, as m. de rémusat remarks--the keenest and fairest of bacon's judges--gives bacon his claim to the undefinable but very real character of greatness. two men stand out, "the masters of those who know," without equals up to their time, among men--the greek aristotle and the englishman bacon. they agree in the universality and comprehensiveness of their conception of human knowledge; and they were absolutely alone in their serious practical ambition to work out this conception. in the separate departments of thought, of investigation, of art, each is left far behind by numbers of men, who in these separate departments have gone far deeper than they, have soared higher, have been more successful in what they attempted. but aristotle first, and for his time more successfully, and bacon after him, ventured on the daring enterprise of "taking all knowledge for their province;" and in this they stood alone. this present scene of man's existence, this that we call nature, the stage on which mortal life begins and goes on and ends, the faculties with which man is equipped to act, to enjoy, to create, to hold his way amid or against the circumstances and forces round him--this is what each wants to know, as thoroughly and really as can be. it is not to reduce things to a theory or a system that they look around them on the place where they find themselves with life and thought and power; that were easily done, and has been done over and over again, only to prove its futility. it is to know, as to the whole and its parts, as men understand _knowing_ in some one subject of successful handling, whether art or science or practical craft. this idea, this effort, distinguishes these two men. the greeks--predecessors, contemporaries, successors of aristotle--were speculators, full of clever and ingenious guesses, in which the amount of clear and certain fact was in lamentable disproportion to the schemes blown up from it; or they devoted themselves more profitably to some one or two subjects of inquiry, moral or purely intellectual, with absolute indifference to what might be asked, or what might be known, of the real conditions under which they were passing their existence. some of the romans, cicero and pliny, had encyclopædic minds; but the roman mind was the slave of precedent, and was more than satisfied with partially understanding and neatly arranging what the greeks had left. the arabians looked more widely about them; but the arabians were essentially sceptics, and resigned subjects to the inevitable and the inexplicable; there was an irony, open or covert, in their philosophy, their terminology, their transcendental mysticism, which showed how little they believed that they really knew. the vast and mighty intellects of the schoolmen never came into a real grapple with the immensity of the facts of the natural or even of the moral world; within the world of abstract thought, the world of language, with its infinite growths and consequences, they have never had their match for keenness, for patience, for courage, for inexhaustible toil; but they were as much disconnected from the natural world, which was their stage of life, as if they had been disembodied spirits. the renaissance brought with it not only the desire to know, but to know comprehensively and in all possible directions; it brought with it temptations to the awakened italian genius, renewed, enlarged, refined, if not strengthened by its passage through the middle ages, to make thought deal with the real, and to understand the scene in which men were doing such strange and wonderful things; but giordano bruno, telesio, campanella, and their fellows, were not men capable of more than short flights, though they might be daring and eager ones. it required more thoroughness, more humble-minded industry, to match the magnitude of the task. and there have been men of universal minds and comprehensive knowledge since bacon, leibnitz, goethe, humboldt, men whose thoughts were at home everywhere, where there was something to be known. but even for them the world of knowledge has grown too large. we shall never again see an aristotle or a bacon, because the conditions of knowledge have altered. bacon, like aristotle, belonged to an age of adventure, which went to sea little knowing whither it went, and ill furnished with knowledge and instruments. he entered with a vast and vague scheme of discovery on these unknown seas and new worlds which to us are familiar, and daily traversed in every direction. this new world of knowledge has turned out in many ways very different from what aristotle or bacon supposed, and has been conquered by implements and weapons very different in precision and power from what they purposed to rely on. but the combination of patient and careful industry, with the courage and divination of genius, in doing what none had done before, makes it equally stupid and idle to impeach their greatness. . bacon has been charged with bringing philosophy down from the heights, not as of old to make men know themselves, and to be the teacher of the highest form of truth, but to be the purveyor of material utility. it contemplates only, it is said, the "_commoda vitæ_;" about the deeper and more elevating problems of thought it does not trouble itself. it concerns itself only about external and sensible nature, about what is "of the earth, earthy." but when it comes to the questions which have attracted the keenest and hardiest thinkers, the question, what it is that thinks and wills--what is the origin and guarantee of the faculties by which men know anything at all and form rational and true conceptions about nature and themselves, whence it is that reason draws its powers and materials and rules--what is the meaning of words which all use but few can explain--time and space, and being and cause, and consciousness and choice, and the moral law--bacon is content with a loose and superficial treatment of them. bacon certainly was not a metaphysician, nor an exact and lucid reasoner. with wonderful flashes of sure intuition or happy anticipation, his mind was deficient in the powers which deal with the deeper problems of thought, just as it was deficient in the mathematical faculty. the subtlety, the intuition, the penetration, the severe precision, even the force of imagination, which make a man a great thinker on any abstract subject were not his; the interest of questions which had interested metaphysicians had no interest for him: he distrusted and undervalued them. when he touches the "ultimities" of knowledge he is as obscure and hard to be understood as any of those restless southern italians of his own age, who shared with him the ambition of reconstructing science. certainly the science which most interested bacon, the science which he found, as he thought, in so desperate a condition, and to which he gave so great an impulse, was physical science. but physical science may be looked at and pursued in different ways, in different tempers, with different objects. it may be followed in the spirit of newton, of boyle, of herschel, of faraday; or with a confined and low horizon it may be dwarfed and shrivelled into a mean utilitarianism. but bacon's horizon was not a narrow one. he believed in god and immortality and the christian creed and hope. to him the restoration of the reign of man was a noble enterprise, because man was so great and belonged to so great an order of things, because the things which he was bid to search into with honesty and truthfulness were the works and laws of god, because it was so shameful and so miserable that from an ignorance which industry and good-sense could remedy, the tribes of mankind passed their days in self-imposed darkness and helplessness. it was god's appointment that men should go through this earthly stage of their being. each stage of man's mysterious existence had to be dealt with, not according to his own fancies, but according to the conditions imposed on it; and it was one of man's first duties to arrange for his stay on earth according to the real laws which he could find out if he only sought for them. doubtless it was one of bacon's highest hopes that from the growth of true knowledge would follow in surprising ways the relief of man's estate; this, as an end, runs through all his yearning after a fuller and surer method of interpreting nature. the desire to be a great benefactor, the spirit of sympathy and pity for mankind, reign through this portion of his work--pity for confidence so greatly abused by the teachers of man, pity for ignorance which might be dispelled, pity for pain and misery which might be relieved. in the quaint but beautiful picture of courtesy, kindness, and wisdom, which he imagines in the _new atlantis_, the representative of true philosophy, the "father of solomon's house," is introduced as one who "had an aspect as if he pitied men." but unless it is utilitarianism to be keenly alive to the needs and pains of life, and to be eager and busy to lighten and assuage them, bacon's philosophy was not utilitarian. it may deserve many reproaches, but not this one. such a passage as the following--in which are combined the highest motives and graces and passions of the soul, love of truth, humility of mind, purity of purpose, reverence for god, sympathy for man, compassion for the sorrows of the world and longing to heal them, depth of conviction and faith--fairly represents the spirit which runs through his works. after urging the mistaken use of imagination and authority in science, he goes on-- "there is not and never will be an end or limit to this; one catches at one thing, another at another; each has his favourite fancy; pure and open light there is none; every one philosophises out of the cells of his own imagination, as out of plato's cave; the higher wits with more acuteness and felicity, the duller, less happily, but with equal pertinacity. and now of late, by the regulation of some learned and (as things now are) excellent men (the former license having, i suppose, become wearisome), the sciences are confined to certain and prescribed authors, and thus restrained are imposed upon the old and instilled into the young; so that now (to use the sarcasm of cicero concerning cæsar's year) the constellation of lyra rises by edict, and authority is taken for truth, not truth for authority. which kind of institution and discipline is excellent for present use, but precludes all prospect of improvement. for we copy the sin of our first parents while we suffer for it. they wished to be like god, but their posterity wish to be even greater. for we create worlds, we direct and domineer over nature, we will have it that all things _are_ as in our folly we think they should be, not as seems fittest to the divine wisdom, or as they are found to be in fact; and i know not whether we more distort the facts of nature or of our own wits; but we clearly impress the stamp of our own image on the creatures and works of god, instead of carefully examining and recognising in them the stamp of the creator himself. wherefore our dominion over creatures is a second time forfeited, not undeservedly; and whereas after the fall of man some power over the resistance of creatures was still left to him--the power of subduing and managing them by true and solid arts--yet this too through our insolence, and because we desire to be like god and to follow the dictates of our own reason, we in great part lose. if, therefore, there be any humility towards the creator, any reverence for or disposition to magnify his works, any charity for man and anxiety to relieve his sorrows and necessities, any love of truth in nature, any hatred of darkness, any desire for the purification of the understanding, we must entreat men again and again to discard, or at least set apart for a while, these volatile and preposterous philosophies which have preferred theses to hypotheses, led experience captive, and triumphed over the works of god; and to approach with humility and veneration to unroll the volume of creation, to linger and meditate therein, and with minds washed clean from opinions to study it in purity and integrity. for this is that sound and language which "went forth into all lands," and did not incur the confusion of babel; this should men study to be perfect in, and becoming again as little children condescend to take the alphabet of it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the interpretation thereof, but pursue it strenuously and persevere even unto death."--preface to _historia naturalis_: translated, _works_, v. - . chapter ix. bacon as a writer. bacon's name belongs to letters as well as to philosophy. in his own day, whatever his contemporaries thought of his _instauration of knowledge_, he was in the first rank as a speaker and a writer. sir walter raleigh, contrasting him with salisbury, who could speak but not write, and northampton, who could write but not speak, thought bacon eminent both as a speaker and a writer. ben jonson, passing in review the more famous names of his own and the preceding age, from sir thomas more to sir philip sidney, hooker, essex, and raleigh, places bacon without a rival at the head of the company as the man who had "fulfilled all numbers," and "stood as the mark and [greek: akmê] of our language." and he also records bacon's power as a speaker. "no man," he says, "ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered."..."his hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion ... the fear of every man that heard him was that he should make an end." he notices one feature for which we are less prepared, though we know that the edge of bacon's sarcastic tongue was felt and resented in james's court. "his speech," says ben jonson, "was nobly censorious when he could _spare and pass by a jest_." the unpopularity which certainly seems to have gathered round his name may have had something to do with this reputation. yet as an english writer bacon did not expect to be remembered, and he hardly cared to be. he wrote much in latin, and his first care was to have his books put into a latin dress. "for these modern languages," he wrote to toby matthews towards the close of his life, "will at one time or another play the bank-rowte with books, and since i have lost much time with this age, i would be glad if god would give me leave to recover it with posterity." he wanted to be read by the learned out of england, who were supposed to appreciate his philosophical ideas better than his own countrymen, and the only way to this was to have his books translated into the "general language." he sends prince charles the _advancement_ in its new latin dress. "it is a book," he says, "that will live, and be a citizen of the world, as english books are not." and he fitted it for continental reading by carefully weeding it of all passages that might give offence to the censors at rome or paris. "i have been," he writes to the king, "mine own _index expurgatorius_, that it may be read in all places. for since my end of putting it in latin was to have it read everywhere, it had been an absurd contradiction to free it in the language and to pen it up in the matter." even the _essays_ and the _history of henry vii._ he had put into latin "by some good pens that do not forsake me." among these translators are said to have been george herbert and hobbes, and on more doubtful authority, ben jonson and selden. the _essays_ were also translated into latin and italian with bacon's sanction. bacon's contemptuous and hopeless estimate of "these modern languages," forty years after spenser had proclaimed and justified his faith in his own language, is only one of the proofs of the short-sightedness of the wisest and the limitations of the largest-minded. perhaps we ought not to wonder at his silence about shakespeare. it was the fashion, except among a set of clever but not always very reputable people, to think the stage, as it was, below the notice of scholars and statesmen; and shakespeare took no trouble to save his works from neglect. yet it is a curious defect in bacon that he should not have been more alive to the powers and future of his own language. he early and all along was profoundly impressed with the contrast, which the scholarship of the age so abundantly presented, of words to things. he dwells in the _advancement_ on that "first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter." he illustrates it at large from the reaction of the new learning and of the popular teaching of the reformation against the utilitarian and unclassical terminology of the schoolmen; a reaction which soon grew to excess, and made men "hunt more after choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses," than after worth of subject, soundness of argument, "life of invention or depth of judgment." "i have represented this," he says, "in an example of late times, but it hath been and will be _secundum majus et minus_ in all times;" and he likens this "vanity" to "pygmalion's frenzy"--"for to fall in love with words which are but the images of matter, is all one as to fall in love with a picture." he was dissatisfied with the first attempt at translation into latin of the _advancement_ by dr. playfer of cambridge, because he "desired not so much neat and polite, as clear, masculine, and apt expression." yet, with this hatred of circumlocution and prettiness, of the cloudy amplifications, and pompous flourishings, and "the flowing and watery vein," which the scholars of his time affected, it is strange that he should not have seen that the new ideas and widening thoughts of which he was the herald would want a much more elastic and more freely-working instrument than latin could ever become. it is wonderful indeed what can be done with latin. it was long after his day to be the language of the exact sciences. in his _history of the winds_, which is full of his irrepressible fancy and picturesqueness, bacon describes in clear and intelligible latin the details of the rigging of a modern man-of-war, and the mode of sailing her. but such tasks impose a yoke, sometimes a rough one, on a language which has "taken its ply" in very different conditions, and of which the genius is that of indirect and circuitous expression, "full of majesty and circumstance." but it never, even in those days of scholarship, could lend itself to the frankness, the straightforwardness, the fulness and shades of suggestion and association, with which, in handling ideas of subtlety and difficulty, a writer would wish to speak to his reader, and which he could find only in his mother tongue. it might have been thought that with bacon's contempt of form and ceremony in these matters, his consciousness of the powers of english in his hands might have led him to anticipate that a flexible and rich and strong language might create a literature, and that a literature, if worth studying, would be studied in its own language. but so great a change was beyond even his daring thoughts. to him, as to his age, the only safe language was the latin. for familiar use english was well enough. but it could not be trusted; "it would play the bankrupt with books." and yet galileo was writing in italian as well as in latin; only within twenty-five years later, descartes was writing _de la méthode_, and pascal was writing in the same french in which he wrote the _provincial letters_, his _nouvelles expériences touchant le vide_, and the controversial pamphlets which followed it; showing how in that interval of five-and-twenty years an instrument had been fashioned out of a modern language such as for lucid expression and clear reasoning, bacon had not yet dreamed of. from bacon to pascal is the change from the old scientific way of writing to the modern; from a modern language, as learned and used in the th century, to one learned in the th. but the language of the age of elizabeth was a rich and noble one, and it reached a high point in the hands of bacon. in his hands it lent itself to many uses, and assumed many forms, and he valued it, not because he thought highly of its qualities as a language, but because it enabled him with least trouble "to speak as he would," in throwing off the abundant thoughts that rose within his mind, and in going through the variety of business which could not be done in latin. but in all his writing it is the matter, the real thing that he wanted to say, which was uppermost. he cared how it was said, not for the sake of form or ornament, but because the force and clearness of what was said depended so much on how it was said. of course, what he wanted to say varied indefinitely with the various occasions of his life. his business may merely be to write "a device" or panegyric for a pageant in the queen's honour, or for the revels of gray's inn. but even these trifles are the result of real thought, and are full of ideas--ideas about the hopes of knowledge or about the policy of the state; and though, of course, they have plenty of the flourishes and quaint absurdities indispensable on such occasions, yet the "rhetorical affectation" is in the thing itself, and not in the way it is handled; he had an opportunity of saying some of the things which were to him of deep and perpetual interest, and he used it to say them, as forcibly, as strikingly, as attractively as he could. his manner of writing depends, not on a style, or a studied or acquired habit, but on the nature of the task which he has in hand. everywhere his matter is close to his words, and governs, animates, informs his words. no one in england before had so much as he had the power to say what he wanted to say, and exactly as he wanted to say it. no one was so little at the mercy of conventional language or customary rhetoric, except when he persuaded himself that he had to submit to those necessities of flattery, which cost him at last so dear. the book by which english readers, from his own time to ours, have known him best, better than by the originality and the eloquence of the _advancement_, or than by the political weight and historical imagination of the _history of henry vii._, is the first book which he published, the volume of _essays_. it is an instance of his self-willed but most skilful use of the freedom and ease which the "modern language," which he despised, gave him. it is obvious that he might have expanded these "counsels, moral and political," to the size which such essays used to swell to after his time. many people would have thanked him for doing so; and some have thought it a good book on which to hang their own reflections and illustrations. but he saw how much could be done by leaving the beaten track of set treatise and discourse, and setting down unceremoniously the observations which he had made, and the real rules which he had felt to be true, on various practical matters which come home to men's "business and bosoms." he was very fond of these moral and political generalisations, both of his own collecting and as found in writers who, he thought, had the right to make them, like the latins of the empire and the italians and spaniards of the renaissance. but a mere string of maxims and quotations would have been a poor thing and not new; and he cast what he had to say into connected wholes. but nothing can be more loose than the structure of the essays. there is no art, no style, almost, except in a few--the political ones--no order: thoughts are put down and left unsupported, unproved, undeveloped. in the first form of the ten, which composed the first edition of , they are more like notes of analysis or tables of contents; they are austere even to meagreness. but the general character continues in the enlarged and expanded ones of bacon's later years. they are like chapters in aristotle's ethics and rhetoric on virtues and characters; only bacon's takes aristotle's broad marking lines as drawn, and proceeds with the subtler and more refined observations of a much longer and wider experience. but these short papers say what they have to say without preface, and in literary undress, without a superfluous word, without the joints and bands of structure; they say it in brief, rapid sentences, which come down, sentence after sentence, like the strokes of a great hammer. no wonder that in their disdainful brevity they seem rugged and abrupt, "and do not seem to end, but fall." but with their truth and piercingness and delicacy of observation, their roughness gives a kind of flavour which no elaboration could give. it is none the less that their wisdom is of a somewhat cynical kind, fully alive to the slipperiness and self-deceits and faithlessness which are in the world and rather inclined to be amused at them. in some we can see distinct records of the writer's own experience: one contains the substance of a charge delivered to judge hutton on his appointment; another of them is a sketch drawn from life of a character which had crossed bacon's path, and in the essay on _seeming wise_ we can trace from the impatient notes put down in his _commentarius solutus_, the picture of the man who stood in his way, the attorney-general hobart. some of them are memorable oracular utterances not inadequate to the subject, on _truth_ or _death_ or _unity_. others reveal an utter incapacity to come near a subject, except as a strange external phenomena, like the essay on _love_. there is a distinct tendency in them to the italian school of political and moral wisdom, the wisdom of distrust and of reliance on indirect and roundabout ways. there is a group of them, "of _delays_," "of _cunning_," "of _wisdom for a man's self_," "of _despatch_," which show how vigilantly and to what purpose he had watched the treasurers and secretaries and intriguers of elizabeth's and james's courts; and there are curious self-revelations, as in the essay on _friendship_. but there are also currents of better and larger feeling, such as those which show his own ideal of "_great place_," and what he felt of its dangers and duties. and mixed with the fantastic taste and conceits of the time, there is evidence in them of bacon's keen delight in nature, in the beauty and scents of flowers, in the charm of open-air life, as in the essay on _gardens_, "the purest of human pleasures, the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." but he had another manner of writing for what he held to be his more serious work. in the philosophical and historical works there is no want of attention to the flow and order and ornament of composition. when we come to the _advancement of learning_, we come to a book which is one of the landmarks of what high thought and rich imagination have made of the english language. it is the first great book in english prose of secular interest; the first book which can claim a place beside the _laws of ecclesiastical polity_. as regards its subject-matter, it has been partly thrown into the shade by the greatly enlarged and elaborate form in which it ultimately appeared, in a latin dress, as the first portion of the scheme of the _instauratio_, the _de augmentis scientiarum_. bacon looked on it as a first effort, a kind of call-bell to awaken and attract the interest of others in the thoughts and hopes which so interested himself. but it contains some of his finest writing. in the _essays_ he writes as a looker-on at the game of human affairs, who, according to his frequent illustration, sees more of it than the gamesters themselves, and is able to give wiser and faithful counsel, not without a touch of kindly irony at the mistakes which he observes. in the _advancement_ he is the enthusiast for a great cause and a great hope, and all that he has of passion and power is enlisted in the effort to advance it. the _advancement_ is far from being a perfect book. as a survey of the actual state of knowledge in his day, of its deficiencies, and what was wanted to supply them, it is not even up to the materials of the time. even the improved _de augmentis_ is inadequate; and there is reason to think the _advancement_ was a hurried book, at least in the later part, and it is defective in arrangement and proportion of parts. two of the great divisions of knowledge--history and poetry--are despatched in comparatively short chapters; while in the division on "civil knowledge," human knowledge as it respects society, he inserts a long essay, obviously complete in itself and clumsily thrust in here, on the ways of getting on in the world, the means by which a man may be "_faber fortunæ suæ_"--the architect of his own success; too lively a picture to be pleasant of the arts with which he had become acquainted in the process of rising. the book, too, has the blemishes of its own time; its want of simplicity, its inevitable though very often amusing and curious pedantries. but the _advancement_ was the first of a long line of books which have attempted to teach english readers how to think of knowledge; to make it really and intelligently the interest, not of the school or the study or the laboratory only, but of society at large. it was a book with a purpose, new then, but of which we have seen the fulfilment. he wanted to impress on his generation, as a very practical matter, all that knowledge might do in wise hands, all that knowledge had lost by the faults and errors of men and the misfortunes of time, all that knowledge might be pushed to in all directions by faithful and patient industry and well-planned methods for the elevation and benefit of man in his highest capacities as well as in his humblest. and he further sought to teach them _how_ to know; to make them understand that difficult achievement of self-knowledge, to know _what it is_ to know; to give the first attempted chart to guide them among the shallows and rocks and whirlpools which beset the course and action of thought and inquiry; to reveal to them the "idols" which unconsciously haunt the minds of the strongest as well as the weakest, and interpose their delusions when we are least aware--"the fallacies and false appearances inseparable from our nature and our condition of life." to induce men to believe not only that there was much to know that was not yet dreamed of, but that the way of knowing needed real and thorough improvement; that the knowing mind bore along with it all kinds of snares and disqualifications of which it is unconscious; and that it needed training quite as much as materials to work on, was the object of the _advancement_. it was but a sketch; but it was a sketch so truly and forcibly drawn, that it made an impression which has never been weakened. to us its use and almost its interest is passed. but it is a book which we can never open without coming on some noble interpretation of the realities of nature or the mind; some unexpected discovery of that quick and keen eye which arrests us by its truth; some felicitous and unthought-of illustration, yet so natural as almost to be doomed to become a commonplace; some bright touch of his incorrigible imaginativeness, ever ready to force itself in amid the driest details of his argument. the _advancement_ was only one shape out of many into which he cast his thoughts. bacon was not easily satisfied with his work; even when he published he did so, not because he had brought his work to the desired point, but lest anything should happen to him and it should "perish." easy and unstudied as his writing seems, it was, as we have seen, the result of unintermitted trouble and varied modes of working. he was quite as much a talker as a writer, and beat out his thoughts into shape in talking. in the essay on _friendship_ he describes the process with a vividness which tells of his own experience-- "but before you come to that [the faithful counsel that a man receiveth from his friend], certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another. he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. it was well said by themistocles to the king of persia, 'that speech was like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thought they lie in packs.' neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel. (they are, indeed, best.) but even without that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits against a stone which itself cuts not. in a word, a man were better relate himself to a _statua_ or a picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother." bacon, as has been said, was a great maker of notes and note-books: he was careful not of the thought only, but of the very words in which it presented itself; everything was collected that might turn out useful in his writing or speaking, down to alternative modes of beginning or connecting or ending a sentence. he watched over his intellectual appliances and resources much more strictly than over his money concerns. he never threw away and never forgot what could be turned to account. he was never afraid of repeating himself, if he thought he had something apt to say. he was never tired of recasting and rewriting, from a mere fragment or preface to a finished paper. he has favourite images, favourite maxims, favourite texts, which he cannot do without. "_da fidei quæ sunt fidei_" comes in from his first book to his last. the illustrations which he gets from the myth of scylla, from atalanta's ball, from borgia's saying about the french marking their lodgings with chalk, the saying that god takes delight, like the "innocent play of children," "to hide his works in order to have them found out," and to have kings as "his playfellows in that game," these, with many others, reappear, however varied the context, from the first to the last of his compositions. an edition of bacon, with marginal references and parallel passages, would show a more persistent recurrence of characteristic illustrations and sentences than perhaps any other writer. the _advancement_ was followed by attempts to give serious effect to its lesson. this was nearly all done in latin. he did so, because in these works he spoke to a larger and, as he thought, more interested audience; the use of latin marked the gravity of his subject as one that touched all mankind; and the majesty of latin suited his taste and his thoughts. bacon spoke, indeed, impressively on the necessity of entering into the realm of knowledge in the spirit of a little child. he dwelt on the paramount importance of beginning from the very bottom of the scale of fact, of understanding the commonplace things at our feet, so full of wonder and mystery and instruction, before venturing on theories. the sun is not polluted by shining on a dunghill, and no facts were too ignoble to be beneath the notice of the true student of nature. but his own genius was for the grandeur and pomp of general views. the practical details of experimental science were, except in partial instances, yet a great way off; and what there was, he either did not care about or really understand, and had no aptitude for handling. he knew enough to give reality to his argument; he knew, and insisted on it, that the labour of observation and experiment would have to be very heavy and quite indispensable. but his own business was with great principles and new truths; these were what had the real attraction for him; it was the magnificent thoughts and boundless hopes of the approaching "kingdom of man" which kindled his imagination and fired his ambition. "he writes philosophy," said harvey, who had come to his own great discovery through patient and obscure experiments on frogs and monkeys--"he writes philosophy like a lord chancellor." and for this part of the work, the stateliness and dignity of the latin corresponded to the proud claims which he made for his conception of the knowledge which was to be. english seemed to him too homely to express the hopes of the world, too unstable to be trusted with them. latin was the language of command and law. his latin, without enslaving itself to ciceronian types, and with a free infusion of barbarous but most convenient words from the vast and ingenious terminology of the schoolmen, is singularly forcible and expressive. it is almost always easy and clear; it can be vague and general, and it can be very precise where precision is wanted. it can, on occasion, be magnificent, and its gravity is continually enlivened by the play upon it, as upon a background, of his picturesque and unexpected fancies. the exposition of his philosophical principles was attempted in two forms. he began in english. he began, in the shape of a personal account, a statement of a series of conclusions to which his thinking had brought him, which he called the "clue of the labyrinth," _filum labyrinthi_. but he laid this aside unfinished, and rewrote and completed it in latin, with the title _cogitata et visa_. it gains by being in latin; as mr. spedding says, "it must certainly be reckoned among the most perfect of bacon's productions." the personal form with each paragraph begins and ends. "_franciscus bacon sic cogitavit_ ... _itaque visum est ei_" gives to it a special tone of serious conviction, and brings the interest of the subject more keenly to the reader. it has the same kind of personal interest, only more solemn and commanding, which there is in descartes's _discours de la méthode_. in this form bacon meant at first to publish. he sent it to his usual critics, sir thomas bodley, toby matthews, and bishop andrewes. and he meant to follow it up with a practical exemplification of his method. but he changed his plan. he had more than once expressed his preference for the form of _aphorisms_ over the argumentative and didactic continuity of a set discourse. he had, indeed, already twice begun a series of aphorisms on the true methods of interpreting nature, and directing the mind in the true path of knowledge, and had begun them with the same famous aphorism with which the _novum organum_ opens. he now reverted to the form of the aphorism, and resolved to throw the materials of the _cogitata et visa_ into this shape. the result is the _novum organum_. it contains, with large additions, the substance of the treatise, but broken up and rearranged in the new form of separate impersonal generalised observations. the points and assertions and issues which, in a continuous discourse, careful readers mark and careless ones miss, are one by one picked out and brought separately to the light. it begins with brief, oracular, unproved maxims and propositions, and goes on gradually into larger developments and explanations. the aphorisms are meant to strike, to awaken questions, to disturb prejudices, to let in light into a nest of unsuspected intellectual confusions and self-misunderstandings, to be the mottoes and watchwords of many a laborious and difficult inquiry. they form a connected and ordered chain, though the ties between each link are not given. in this way bacon put forth his proclamation of war on all that then called itself science; his announcement that the whole work of solid knowledge must be begun afresh, and by a new, and, as he thought, infallible method. on this work bacon concentrated all his care. it was twelve years in hand, and twelve times underwent his revision. "in the first book especially," says mr. ellis, "every word seems to have been carefully weighed; and it would be hard to omit or change anything without injuring the meaning which bacon intended to convey." severe as it is, it is instinct with enthusiasm, sometimes with passion. the latin in which it is written answers to it; it has the conciseness, the breadth, the lordliness of a great piece of philosophical legislation. the world has agreed to date from bacon the systematic reform of natural philosophy, the beginning of an intelligent attempt, which has been crowned by such signal success, to place the investigation of nature on a solid foundation. on purely scientific grounds his title to this great honour may require considerable qualification. what one thing, it is asked, would not have been discovered in the age of galileo and harvey, if bacon had never written? what one scientific discovery can be traced to him, or to the observance of his peculiar rules? it was something, indeed, to have conceived, as clearly as he conceived it, the large and comprehensive idea of what natural knowledge must be, and must rest upon, even if he were not able to realise his idea, and were mistaken in his practical methods of reform. but great ideas and great principles need their adequate interpreter, their _vates sacer_, if they are to influence the history of mankind. this was what bacon was to science, to that great change in the thoughts and activity of men in relation to the world of nature around them: and this is his title to the great place assigned to him. he not only understood and felt what science might be, but he was able to make others--and it was no easy task beforehand, while the wonders of discovery were yet in the future--understand and feel it too. and he was able to do this because he was one of the most wonderful of thinkers and one of the greatest of writers. the disclosure, the interpretation, the development of that great intellectual revolution which was in the air, and which was practically carried forward in obscurity, day by day, by the fathers of modern astronomy and chemistry and physiology, had fallen to the task of a genius, second only to shakespeare. he had the power to tell the story of what they were doing and were to do with a force of imaginative reason of which they were utterly incapable. he was able to justify their attempts and their hopes as they themselves could not. he was able to interest the world in the great prospects opening on it, but of which none but a few students had the key. the calculations of the astronomer, the investigations of the physician, were more or less a subject of talk, as curious or possibly useful employments. but that which bound them together in the unity of science, which gave them their meaning beyond themselves, which raised them to a higher level and gave them their real dignity among the pursuits of men, which forced all thinking men to see what new and unsuspected possibilities in the knowledge and in the condition of mankind were opened before them, was not bacon's own attempts at science, not even his collections of facts and his rules of method, but that great idea of the reality and boundless worth of knowledge which bacon's penetrating and sure intuition had discerned, and which had taken possession of his whole nature. the impulse which he gave to the progress of science came from his magnificent and varied exposition of this idea; from his series of grand and memorable generalisations on the habits and faults of the human mind--on the difficult and yet so obvious and so natural precautions necessary to guide it in the true and hopeful track. it came from the attractiveness, the enthusiasm, and the persuasiveness of the pleading; from the clear and forcible statements, the sustained eloquence, the generous hopes, the deep and earnest purpose of the _advancement_ and the _de augmentis_; from the nobleness, the originality, the picturesqueness, the impressive and irresistible truth of the great aphorisms of the _novum organum_. the end the mystery of francis bacon _william t. smedley_ [illustration: francis bacon at years of age. _from the bust at gorhambury._] the mystery of francis bacon by william t. smedley. ad d.b. "si bene qui latuit, bene vixit, tu bene vivis: ingeniumque tuum grande latendo patet." --_john owen's epigrammatum_, . london: robert banks & son, racquet court, fleet street e.c. . "_but such is the infelicity and unhappy disposition of the human mind in the course of invention that it first distrusts and then despises itself: first will not believe that any such thing can be found out; and when it is found out, cannot understand how the world should have missed it so long._" --"novum organum," chap. cx. contents. page preface chapter i.--sources of information ii.--the stock from which bacon came iii.--francis bacon, to iv.--at cambridge v.--early compositions vi.--bacon's "temporis partus maximus" vii.--bacon's first allegorical romance viii.--bacon in france, - ix.--bacon's suit on his return to england, x.--the "rare and unaccustomed suit" xi.--bacon's second visit to the continent and after xii.--is it probable that bacon left manuscripts hidden away? xiii.--how the elizabethan literature was produced xiv.--the clue to the mystery of bacon's life xv.--burghley and bacon xvi.--the folio edition of shakespeare's plays xvii.--the authorised version of the bible, xviii.--how bacon marked books with the publication of which he was connected xix.--bacon and emblemata xx.--shakespeare's sonnets xxi.--bacon's library xxii.--two german opinions on shakespeare and bacon xxiii.--the testimony of bacon's contemporaries xxiv.--the missing fourth part of "the great instauration" xxv.--the philosophy of bacon appendix preface. is there a mystery connected with the life of francis bacon? the average student of history or literature will unhesitatingly reply in the negative, perhaps qualifying his answer by adding:--unless it be a mystery that a man with such magnificent intellectual attainments could have fallen so low as to prove a faithless friend to a generous benefactor in the hour of his trial, and, upon being raised to one of the highest positions of honour and influence in the state, to become a corrupt public servant and a receiver of bribes to pervert justice.--it is one of the most remarkable circumstances to be found in the history of any country that a man admittedly pre-eminent in his intellectual powers, spoken of by his contemporaries in the highest terms for his virtues and his goodness, should, in subsequent ages, be held up to obloquy and scorn and seldom be referred to except as an example of a corrupt judge, a standing warning to those who must take heed how they stand lest they fall. truly the treatment which francis bacon has received confirms the truth of the aphorism, "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." it is not the intention in the following brief survey of bacon's life to enter upon any attempt to vindicate his character. since his works and life have come prominently before the reading public, he has never been without a defender. montagu, hepworth dixon, and spedding have, one after the other, raised their voices against the injustice which has been done to the memory of this great englishman; and although macaulay, in his misleading and inaccurate essay,[ ] abounding in paradoxes and inconsistencies, produced the most powerful, though prejudiced, attack which has been made on bacon's fame, he may almost be forgiven, because it provided the occasion for james spedding in "evenings with a reviewer," to respond with a thorough and complete vindication of the man to whose memory he devoted his life. there rests on every member of the anglo-saxon race an obligation--imposed upon him by the benefits which he enjoys as the result of francis bacon's life-work--to read this vindication of his character. nor should mention be omitted of the essay by mr. j. m. robertson on "francis bacon" in his excellent work "pioneer humanists." all these defenders of bacon treat their subject from what may be termed the orthodox point of view. they follow in the beaten track. they do not look for bacon outside his acknowledged works and letters. since , however, there has been steadily growing a belief that bacon was associated with the literature of the elizabethan and early jacobean periods, and that he deliberately concealed his connection with it. that this view is scouted by what are termed the men of letters is well-known. they will have none of it. they refuse its claim to a rational hearing. but, in spite of this, as years go on, the number of adherents to the new theory steadily increases. the scornful epithets that are hurled at them only appear to whet their appetite, and increase their determination. men and women devote their lives with enthusiasm to the quest for further knowledge. they dig and delve in the records of the period, and in the byeways of literature. theories which appear extravagant and untenable are propounded. whether any of these theories will come to be accepted and established beyond cavil, time alone can prove. but, at any rate, it is certain that in this quest many forgotten facts are brought to light, and the general stock of information as to the literature of the period is augmented. in the following pages it is sought to establish what may be termed one of these extravagant theories. how far this attempt is successful, it is for the reader to judge. notwithstanding all that may be said to the contrary, by far the greater part of francis bacon's life is unknown. an attempt will be made by the aid of accredited documents and books to represent in a new light his youth and early manhood. it is contended that he deliberately sought to conceal his movements and work, although, at the same time, he left the landmarks by which a diligent student might follow them. in his youth he conceived the idea that the man francis bacon should be concealed, and be revealed only by his works. the motto, "_mente videbor_"--by the mind i shall be seen--became the guiding principle of his life. footnotes: [ ] attention is drawn to one of the inaccuracies in "an introduction to mathematics," by a. w. whithead, sc.d., f.r.s., published in the home university library of modern knowledge. the author says: "macaulay in his essay on bacon contrasts the certainty of mathematics with the uncertainty of philosophy, and by way of a rhetorical example he says, 'there has been no re-action against taylor's theorem.' he could not have chosen a worse example. for, without having made an examination of english text-books on mathematics contemporary with the publication of this essay, the assumption is a fairly safe one that taylor's theorem was enunciated and proved wrongly in every one of them." the mystery of francis bacon. chapter i. sources of information. the standard work is "the life and letters of francis bacon," by james spedding, which was published from - . it comprises seven volumes, with , pages. the first twenty years of bacon's life are disposed of in pages, and the next ten years in pages, of which pages are taken up with three tracts attributed to him. there is practically no information given as to what should be the most important years of his life. the two first volumes carry the narrative to the end of elizabeth's reign, when bacon had passed his fortieth year. there is in them a considerable contribution to the history of the times, but a critical perusal will establish the fact that they add very little to our knowledge of the man, and they fail to give any adequate idea of how he was occupied during those years. in the seven volumes letters of bacon's are printed, and of these no less than are addressed to james i. and the duke of buckingham, and were written during the last years of his life. the biographies by montagu and hepworth dixon are less pretentious, but contain little more information. the first published life of bacon appears to have been unknown to all these writers. in was published in paris a translation of the "sylva sylvarum," as the "histoire naturelle de mre. francois bacon." prefixed to it is a chapter entitled "discours sur la vie de mre. francois bacon, chancelier d'angleterre." reference will be made to this important discourse hereafter. it is sufficient for the present to say that it definitely states that during his youth bacon travelled in italy and spain, which fact is to-day unrecognised by those who are accepted as authorities on his life. in there was published at leyden a dutch translation of forty-six of bacon's essays--the "wisdom of the ancients" and the "religious meditations." the translation is by peter boener, an apothecary of nymegen, holland, who was in bacon's service for some years as domestic apothecary, and occasional amanuensis, and quitted his employment in . boener added a life of bacon which is a mere fragment, but contains testimony by a personal attendant which is of value. in william rawley issued a volume of unpublished manuscripts under the title of "resuscitatio," and to these he added a life of the great philosopher. rawley is only once mentioned by bacon. his will contains the sentence: "i give to my chaplain, dr. rawleigh, one hundred pounds." rawley was born in . when he became associated with his master is not known, but it could only have been towards the close of his life. bacon appears to have reposed great confidence in him. in ,[ ] the year following bacon's death, he published the "sylva sylvarum." this must have been in the press before bacon's death. rawley subsequently published other works, and was associated with isaac gruter during the seventeenth century in producing on the continent various editions of bacon's works. rawley's account of bacon's life is meagre, and, having regard to the wealth of information which must have been at his disposal, it is a very disappointing production. still, it contains information which is not to be found elsewhere. how incomplete it is may be gathered from the fact that there is no reference in it to bacon's fall. in was published a volume, "the statesmen and favourites of england since the reformation." it was compiled by david lloyd. the biographies of the elizabethan statesmen were written by someone who was closely associated with them, and who appears to have had exceptional opportunities of obtaining information as to their opinions and characters.[ ] as to how these lives came into lloyd's possession nothing is known. prefixed to the biographies are two pages containing "the lord bacon's judgment in a work of this nature." the chapter on bacon is a most important contribution to the subject, but it also appears to have escaped the notice of spedding, hepworth dixon, and montagu. in francis osborn, in letters to his son, gives a graphic description of the lord chancellor. perhaps one can better picture bacon as he was in the strength of his manhood from osborne's account of him than from any other source. thomas bushell, another of bacon's household dependents, published in "the first part of youth's errors." in a letter therein addressed to mr. john eliot, he has left contributions to our stock of knowledge. there are also some miscellaneous tracts written by him, and published about the year , which contain references to bacon. fuller's worthies ( ) gives a short account of his life and character, eulogistic but sparse. in was published "baconiana," or certain genuine remains of sir francis bacon, &c., by bishop tennison, but it contains no better account of his life. winstanley's worthies ( ) relies entirely on rawley's life, which is reproduced in it. aubrey's brief lives were written about . there are references to bacon in arthur wilson's "history of the reign of james i."; in "the court of james i.," by sir w. a.; in "simeon d'ewes' diary"; and, lastly, in his "discoveries," ben jonson contributes a high eulogy on bacon's character and attainments. in robert stephens, the court historiographer, published a volume of bacon's letters, with an introduction giving some account of his life; and there was a second edition in . in david mallet published an edition of bacon's works, and wrote a life to accompany it. this was subsequently printed as a separate volume. as a biography it is without interest, as it contains no new facts as to his life. in memoirs of the reign of queen elizabeth from the year to her death appeared, edited by dr. thomas birch. these memoirs are founded upon the letters of the various members of the bacon family. in a volume of letters of francis bacon was issued under the same editor. such are the sources of information which have come down to us in biographical notices. in the british museum, the record office, and elsewhere are the originals of the letters and the manuscripts of some of the tracts which spedding has printed. the british museum also possesses two books of memoranda used by bacon. the transportat is entirely, and the promus is partly, in his handwriting. beyond his published works, that is all that so far has been available. spedding remarks[ ]: "what became of his books which were left to sir john constable and must have contained traces of his reading, we do not know, but very few appear to have survived." happily, spedding was wrong. during the past ten years nearly , books which have passed through bacon's hands have been gathered together. these are copiously annotated by him, and from these annotations the wide range and the methodical character of his reading may be gathered. manuscripts which were in his library, and at least four common-place books in his handwriting, have also been recovered. particulars of these have not yet been made public, but the advantage of access to them has been available in the preparation this volume. footnotes: [ ] there are copies of this work bearing date , the year in which bacon died. [ ] the concluding paragraph of the epistle to the reader is as follows: "it's easily imaginable how unconcerned i am as to the fate of this book either in the history, or the observations, since i have been so faithful in the first, that it is not my own, but the historians; and so careful in the second that they are not mine, but the histories." [ ] "life and letters," vol. vii., page . chapter ii. the stock from which bacon came. "a prodigy of parts he must be who was begot by wise sir nicholas bacon, born of the accomplished mrs. ann cooke," says an early biographer. nicholas bacon is said to have been born at chislehurst, in kent, in . he was the second son of robert bacon, of drinkstone, in suffolk, esquire and sheep-reeve to the abbey of bury st. edmunds. it is believed that he was educated at the abbey school. he speaks of his intimacy with edmund rougham, a monk of that house, who was noted for his wonderful proficiency in memory. he was admitted to the college of corpus christi, cambridge, and took the degree of b.a. in - . he went to paris soon afterwards, and on his return studied law at gray's inn, being called to the bar in , and admitted ancient in . he was appointed, in , clerk to the court of augmentations. in he was made attorney of the court of wards and liveries, and continued as such under edward vi. upon the accession of mary he conformed to the change of religion and retained his office during her reign. nicholas bacon and william cecil, each being a widower, had married sisters. when elizabeth came to the throne cecil became her adviser. he was well acquainted with nicholas bacon's sterling worth and great capacity for business, and availed himself of his advice and assistance. the queen delivered to bacon the great seal, with the title of lord keeper, on the nd december, , and he was sworn of the privy council and knighted. by letters patent, dated th april, , the full powers of a chancellor were conferred upon him. in he narrowly escaped the loss of his office for alleged complicity in the issue of a pamphlet espousing the cause of the house of suffolk to the succession. he was restored to favour, and continued as lord keeper until his death in . the queen visited him at gorhambury on several occasions. sir nicholas bacon, in addition to performing the important duties of his high office in the court of chancery and in the star chamber, took an important part in all public affairs, both domestic and foreign, from the accession of elizabeth until his death. he first married jane, daughter of william fernley, of west creting, suffolk, by whom he had three sons and three daughters. for his second wife he married anne, daughter of sir anthony cooke, by whom he had two sons, anthony and francis. it is of more importance for the present purpose to know what type of man was the father of francis bacon. the author of the "arte of english poesie" ( ) relates that he came upon sir nicholas sitting in his gallery with the works of quintillian before him, and adds: "in deede he was a most eloquent man and of rare learning and wisdome as ever i knew england to breed, and one that joyed as much in learned men and good witts." this author, speaking of sir nicholas and burleigh, remarks, "from whose lippes i have seen to proceede more grave and naturall eloquence then from all the oratours of oxford and cambridge." in his "fragmenta regalia" sir robert naunton describes him as "an archpeece of wit and wisdom," stating that "he was abundantly facetious which took much with the queen when it was suited with the season as he was well able to judge of his times." fuller describes him as "a man of rare wit and deep experience," and, again, as "a good man, a grave statesman, and a father to his country." bishop burnet speaks of him as "not only one of the most learned and pious men, but one of the wisest ministers this nation ever bred." the observations of the author of "the statesmen and favourites of england in the reign of queen elizabeth" are very illuminating. "sir nicholas bacon," he says, "was a man full of wit and wisdome, a gentleman and a man of law with great knowledge therein." he proceeds: "this gentleman understood his mistress well and the times better: he could raise factions to serve the one and allay them to suit the others. he had the deepest reach into affairs of any man that was at the council table: the knottiest head to pierce into difficulties: the most comprehensive judgement to surround the merit of a cause: the strongest memory to recollect all circumstances of a business to one view: the greatest patience to debate and consider; (for it was he that first said, let us stay a little and we will have done the sooner:) and the clearest reason to urge anything that came in his way in the court of chancery.... leicester seemed wiser than he was, bacon was wiser than he seemed to be; hunsden neither was nor seemed wise.... great was this stateman's wit, greater the fame of it; which as he would say, _being nothing, made all things_. for report, though but fancy, begets opinion; and opinion begets substance.... he neither affected nor attained to greatness: _mediocria firma_, was his principle and his practice. when queen elizabeth asked him, _why his house was so little?_ he answered, _madam, my house is not too little for me, but you have made me too big for my house. give me_, said he, _a good estate rather than a great one. he had a very quaint saying and he used it often to good purpose_, that he loved the jest well but not the loss of his friend.... he was in a word, a father of his country and of _sir francis bacon_." before speaking of lady ann bacon, it is necessary to give some account of her father, sir anthony cooke. he was a great-grandson of sir thomas cooke, lord mayor of london, and was born at giddy hall, in essex. again the most valuable observations on his character are to be found in "the lives of statesmen and favourites" before referred to. the author states that sir anthony "was one of the governors to king edward the sixth when prince, and is charactered by mr. camden _vir antiqua serenitate_. he observeth him also to be happy in his daughters, learned above their sex in greek and latine: namely, mildred who married william cecil, lord treasurer of england; anne who married nichlas bacon, lord chancellor of england; katherine who married henry killigrew; elizabeth who married thomas hobby, and afterwards lord russell, and margaret who married ralph rowlet." "gravity," says this author, "was the ballast of sir anthony's soul and general learning its leading.... yet he was somebody in every art, and eminent in all, the whole circle of arts lodging in his soul. his latine, fluent and proper; his greek, critical and exact; his philology and observations upon each of these languages, deep, curious, various and pertinent: his logic, rational; his history and experience, general; his rhetorick and poetry, copious and genuine; his mathematiques, practicable and useful. knowing that souls were equal, and that women are as capable of learning as men, he instilled that to his daughters at night, which he had taught the prince in the day, being resolved to have sons by education, for fear he should have none by birth; and lest he wanted an heir of his body, he made five of his minde, for whom he had at once a _gavel-kind_ of affection and of estate." "three things there are before whom (was sir anthony's saying) i cannot do amis: , my prince; , my conscience; , my children. seneca told his sister, that though he could not leave her a good portion, he would leave her a good pattern. sir anthony would write to his daughter _mildred, my example is your inheritance and my life is your portion_.... "he said first, and his grandchilde my lord bacon after him, that the joys of parents are secrets, and so are their griefs and fears.... very providently did he secure his eternity, by leaving the image of his nature in his children and of his mind in his pupil.... the books he advised were not _many_ but _choice_: the business he pressed was not reading, but digesting.... sir john checke talked merrily, dr. coxe solidly and sir anthony cooke weighingly: a faculty that was derived with his blood to his grandchilde bacon." such then was the father of lady anne bacon. she and her sisters were famous as a family of accomplished classical scholars. she had a thorough knowledge of greek and latin. an apologie ... in defence of the churche of england by dr. jewel, bishop of salisbury, was translated by her from the latin and published in . sir anthony had been exiled during mary's reign, for his adherence to the protestant faith. his daughter, anne, inherited, not only his classical accomplishments, but his strong puritan faith and his hatred of popery. francis bacon describes her as "a saint of god." there is a portrait of her painted by nathaniel bacon, her stepson, in which she appears standing in her pantry habited as a cook. in feature francis appears to have resembled his mother. he "had the same pouting lip, the same round head, the same straight nose and hebe chin." chapter iii. francis bacon, to . in the registry of st. martin's will be found this entry: mr. franciscus bacon jan (_filius d'm nicho bacon magni angliæ sigilli custodis_)." rawley in his "life of the honourable author" says: "francis bacon, the glory of his age and nation, was born in york house or york place, in the strand, on the two and twentieth day of january in the year of our lord ." he relates that "his first and childish years were not without some mark of eminency; at which time he was endued with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as they were pressages of that deep and universal apprehension which was manifest in him afterward." "the queen then delighted much to confer with him, and to prove him with questions unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years that her majesty would often term him '_her young lord keeper_.' being asked by the queen how old he was he answered with much discretion, being then but a boy[ ] that he was two years younger than her majesty's happy reign, with which answer the queen was much taken." in the "lives of the statesmen and favourites of queen elizabeth" there is reference to the early development of his mental and intellectual faculties. the author writes:--"he had a large mind from his father and great abilities from his mother; his parts improved more than his years, his great fixed and methodical memory, his solide judgement, his quick fancy, his ready expression, gave assurance of that profound and universal comprehension of things which then rendered him the observation of great and wise men; and afterwards the wonder of all." the historian continues:--"he never saw anything that was not noble and becoming," "at twelve his industry was above the capacity and his minde beyond the reache of his contemporaries." this boy so marvellously endowed was brought up in surroundings which were ideal for his development. his father, a man of erudition, a wit and orator, occupying one of the highest positions in the country, his mother a lady of great classical accomplishments, who had enjoyed the benefits of an education and training by her father, that eminent scholar, sir anthony cooke, and, lastly, there was this man--his grandfather--living within riding distance from his home. it seems inevitable that the natural powers of young francis must have excited a keen interest in the old tutor of edward vi., who had devoted his evenings to imparting to his daughters what he had taught the prince during the day, so that if he left behind him no heirs of his body, he might leave heirs of his mind. the boy francis was, indeed, a worthy heir of his mind, and it is impossible to believe otherwise than that sir anthony cooke would throw himself heart and soul into the education of his grandchild, but no statement or tradition has come down to this effect. it may be, however, that a sentence which has already been quoted from "the lives of statesmen and favourites" is intended to imply that francis was the pupil of sir anthony: "he said first and his grandchilde my lord bacon after him, that the joys of parents are secrets, and so their griefs and fears.... very providently did he secure his eternity, by leaving the image of his nature in his children and of his mind in his pupil." the pupil referred to was not edward vi., for he died twenty-three years before sir anthony, and he could not, therefore, have left the image of his mind in the young king. following directly after the sentence "he said first and his grandchilde lord bacon after him" it is possible that the reference may be to the boy francis. certainly sir anthony "would secure his eternity" if he left the image of his mind in his "grandchilde." in any case the prodigious natural powers of the boy were placed in an environment well suited for their full development. the historian says that "at twelve his industry was above the capacity and his mind beyond the reache of his contemporaries." who were the contemporaries alluded to? those of his own age, or those who were living at the time? a boy of twelve, he excelled others in his great industry and the wide range of his mind. this industry appears to have accompanied him through life, for rawley states that "he would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies, as walking or taking the air abroad in his coach or some other befitting recreation; and yet he would lose no time, inasmuch as upon the first and immediate return he would fall to reading again, and so suffer no movement of time to slip from him without some present improvement." it is a remarkable fact on which too much stress cannot be laid that in the two lives of bacon, scanty as they are, by contemporary writers, his exceptional industry is pointed out. there are certainly no visible fruits of this industry. although there is no definite information as to what was the state of francis bacon's education at twelve, there is testimony as to that of some of his contemporaries. three instances will suffice. philip melancthon (whose family name was schwartzerd) was born in . his education was at an early age directed by his maternal grandfather, john reuter. after a short stay at a public school at bretten he was removed to the academy at pforzheim. here, under the tutorship of john reuchlin, an elegant scholar and teacher of languages, he acquired the taste for greek literature in which he subsequently became so distinguished. here his genius for composition asserted itself. amongst other poetical essays in which he indulged when eleven years of age, he wrote a humorous piece in the form of a comedy, which he dedicated to his kind friend and instructor, reuchlin, in whose presence it was performed by the schoolfellows of the youthful author. after a residence of two years at pforzheim, philip matriculated at the university of heidelberg on the th october, , being eleven years and nine months old. young as he was, he appears to have been employed to compose most of the harangues that were delivered in the university, besides writing some pieces for the professors themselves. here, at this early age, he composed his "rudiments of the greek language," which were afterwards published. agrippa d'aubigné was born in and died in . at six years of age he read latin, greek, and hebrew. when ten years he translated the crito. italian and spanish were at his command. thomas bodley was born in and died in . in the short autobiography which he left he makes the following statement as to how far his education had advanced when his father decided to fix his abode in the city of geneva in :-- "i was at that time of twelve yeares age but through my fathers cost and care sufficiently instructed to become an auditour of _chevalerius_ in hebrew, of _berealdus_ in greeke, of _calvin_ and _beza_ in divinity and of some other professours in that university, (which was newly there erected) besides my domesticall teachers, in the house of philibertus saracenus, a famous physitian in that city with whom i was boarded; when robertus constantinus that made the greek lexicon read homer with me." bodley was undoubtedly proficient in french, for calvin and beza lectured in french. the "institution of the christian religion," calvin's greatest work, although published in latin in , was translated by him into french, and issued in or . this translation is one of the finest examples of french prose. bodley's english was probably very poor, and for a very good reason--there was no english language worthy of comparison with the languages of france, italy, or spain. it had yet to be created. it is fair to assume that at twelve years of age francis bacon was as proficient in languages as were philip melancthon, agrippa d'aubigné, or thomas bodley at that age. he, therefore, had at least a good knowledge of latin, greek, hebrew, french, and such english as there was. another class of evidence is now available. it has already been stated that a large number of bacon's books have been recovered, copiously annotated by him. some of these books bear the date when the annotations were made. for the most part the marginal notes appear to be aids to memory, but in many cases they are critical observations of the text. these are, however, dealt with in a subsequent chapter. gilbert wats, in dedicating to charles i. his interpretation of "the advancement of proficiency of learning" ( ), makes a statement which throws light on the course of bacon's studies, and this strongly supports the present contention. he says:-- "he (bacon) after he had survaied all the records of antiquity, after the volume of men, betook himselfe to the study of the volume of the world; and having conquerd whatever books possest, set upon the kingdome of nature and carried that victory very farre." speaking of him as a boy his biographer[ ] describes his memory as "fixed and methodical," and in another place he says "his judgment was solid yet his memory was a wonder." the extent of his reading at this time had been very wide. he had already taken all knowledge to be his province, and was with that industry which was beyond the capacity of his contemporaries rapidly laying the foundations which subsequently justified this claim. footnotes: [ ] lloyd states that this occurred when he was seven years of age. [ ] "the lives of statesmen and favourites of elizabeth." chapter iv. at cambridge. francis bacon went to reside at trinity college, cambridge, in april, , being years and months of age. while the plague raged he was absent from the end of august, , until the beginning of march following. he finally left the university at christmas, , about one month before his fifteenth birthday. rawley says he was there educated and bred under the tuition of dr. john whitgift,[ ] then master of the college, afterwards the renowned archbishop of canterbury, a prelate of the first magnitude for sanctity, learning, patience, and humility; under whom he was observed to have been more than an ordinary proficient in the several arts and sciences. amboise, in the "discours sur la vie de m. bacon," prefixed to the "histoire naturelle," paris, , says: "le jugement et la mémoire ne furent jamais en aucun home au degrè qu'ils estoient en celuy-cy; de sorte qu'en bien peu de temps il se rendit fort habile en toutes les sciences qui s'apprennent au collège. et quoi que deslors il fust jugé capable des charges les plas importantes, nean-moins pour ne tomber dedans la mesme faute que sont d'ordinaire les jeunes gens de son estoffe, qui par une ambition trop précipitée portent souvent au maniement des grandes affaires un esprit encore tout rempli des crudités de l'escole, monsieur bacon se voulut acquérir cette science, qui rendit autres-fois ulysse si recommandable et luy fit mériter le nom de sage, par la connoissance des mÂ�urs de tant de nations diverses." that is all that can be said about his career at cambridge except that rawley adds: "whilst he was commorant in the university, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day." as bacon left cambridge at christmas, , before he was years of age, rawley's recollection must have been at fault when he mentions the age of as that when bacon formed this opinion. there is another account of this incident in which it is stated that francis bacon left cambridge without taking a degree as a protest against the manner in which philosophy was taught there. in the preface to the "great instauration" bacon repeats his protest: "and for its value and utility, it must be plainly avowed that that wisdom which we have derived principally from the greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge and has the characteristic property of boys: it can talk but it cannot generate: for it is fruitful of controversies but barren of works." this is merely a re-statement of the position he took up when at cambridge. so this boy set up his opinion against that of the recognised professors of philosophy of his day, against the whole authority of the staff of the university, on a fundamental point on the most important question which could be raised as to the pursuit of knowledge. it is not too much to say that he had at this time covered the whole field of knowledge in a manner more thorough than it had ever been covered before, and with his mind, which was beyond the reach of his contemporaries, he began to lay down those laws which revolutionised all thought and have become the accepted method by which the pursuit of knowledge is followed. it is necessary again to seek for parallels to justify the position which will be claimed for francis bacon at this period. philip melancthon affords one and james crichton another. at heidelberg melancthon remained three years. he left when he was , the principal cause of his leaving being disappointment at being refused a higher degree in the university solely, it is alleged, on account of his youth. in september, , he was entered at the university of tubingen, where, in the following year, before he was years of age, he was created doctor in philosophy or master of arts. he then commenced a course of public lectures, embracing an extraordinary variety of subjects, including the learned languages, rhetoric, logic, ethics, mathematics, and theology. here in he put forth his revision of the text of terence. besides he entered into an undertaking with thomas anshelmus to revise all the books printed by him. he bestowed great labour on a large work in folio by nauclerus, which he appears to have almost entirely re-written. so much romance has been thrown around james crichton that it is difficult to obtain the real facts of his life. sir thomas urquhart, in "discovery of a most exquisite jewel," published in , gives a biography which is, without doubt, mainly apocryphal. certain facts, however, are well established. he was born in the same year as was bacon ( ). at years of age he entered st. andrew's university, and in (the year bacon left cambridge) took his degree, coming out third in the first class. in he went to france, as did bacon--to paris. in the college of navarre he issued a universal challenge. this he subsequently repeated at venice with equal success; that is, to all men, upon all things, in any of twelve languages named. the challenge is broad and formal. he pledged himself to review the schoolmen, allowed his opponents the privilege of selecting their topics--mathematics, no less than scholastic lore--either from branches publicly or privately taught, and promised to return answers in logical figure or in numbers estimated according to their occult power, or in any of a hundred sorts of verse. he is said to have justified before many competent witnesses his magnificent pretensions. what philip melancthon was at fifteen, what james crichton was at sixteen, francis bacon may have been. all the testimony which his contemporaries afford, especially having regard to his after life, justify the assertion that in knowledge and acquirements he was at least their equal. about eighteen months later his portrait was painted by hilliard, the court miniature painter, who inscribed around it, as james spedding says, the significant words--the natural ejaculation, we may presume, of the artist's own emotion--"_si tabula daretur digna animum mallem._" if one could only find materials worthy to paint his mind. footnotes: [ ] dr. whitgift was a man of strong moral rectitude, yet in he became one of its sponsors on the publication of "venus and adonis." chapter v. early compositions. it is at this stage that the mystery of francis bacon begins to develop. every channel through which information might be expected appears to be blocked. besides a few pamphlets, in the production of which little time would be occupied, there came nothing from his pen until when, at the age of , the first edition of the essays was published--only ten short essays containing less than , words. in , when , he addressed to james i. the "two books on the advancement of learning," containing less than , words. it would require no effort on bacon's part to write either of these volumes. he could turn out the "two books of the advancement of learning" with the same facility that a leader writer of the _times_ would write his daily articles. he was to all intents and purposes unoccupied. until he had not held a brief, and he never had any practice at the bar worth considering. he was a member of parliament, but the house seldom sat, and never for long periods. bacon's life is absolutely unaccounted for. it is now proposed, by the aid of the literature of the period from to , and with the help of information derived from his own handwriting, to trace, step by step, the results of his industry, and to supply the reason for the concealment which he pursued. there is an entry in the book of orders of gray's inn under date st november, , that anthony and francis bacon (who had been admitted members th june, , "_de societate magistrorum_") be admitted to the grand company, _i.e._, to the degree of ancients, a privilege to which they were entitled as sons of a judge. from a letter subsequently written by burghley, it is known that one barker was appointed as their tutor of law. apparently it was intended that they should settle down to a course of legal training, but this plan was abandoned, at any rate, as far as francis was concerned. sir amias paulet, who was chancellor of the garter, a privy counsellor, and held in high esteem by the queen,[ ] was about to proceed to paris to take the place of dr. dale as ambassador at the court of france. there is a letter written from calais, dated th september, , from sir amias to lord burghley, in which this paragraph appears: "my ordinary train is no greater than of necessity, being augmented by some young gentlemen, whereof one is sir nicholas throgmorton's son, who was recommended to me by her majesty, and, therefore, i could not refuse him. the others are so dear to me and the most part of them of such towardness, as my good hope of their doing well, and thereafter they will be able to serve their prince and country, persuades me to make so much to excuse my folly as to entreat you to use your favour in my allowance for my transportations, my charges being increased by these extraordinary occasions." francis bacon was one of this group of young gentlemen. rawley states that "after he had passed the circle of the liberal arts, his father thought fit to frame and mould him for the arts of state; and for that end sent him over into france with sir amyas paulet then employed ambassador lieger into france." there are grounds for believing that bacon's literary activity had commenced before he left england. there is abundant evidence to prove that it was the custom at this period for authors who desired to conceal their authorship to substitute for their own names, initials or the names of others on the title-pages. two instances will suffice: "the arte of english poesie" was published in , but written several years previously. the author says:--"i know very many notable gentlemen in the court that have written commendably, and suppressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seeme learned, and to shew himself amorous of any learned art." there is a bare-faced avowal of how names were placed on title-pages in a letter which exists from henry cuffe to mr. reynolds. cuffe, an oxford scholar of distinction, was a close companion and confidant of essex. after the capture and sacking of cadiz by essex and howard, the former deemed it important that his version of the affair should be the first to be published in england. cuffe, therefore, started off post haste with the manuscript, but was taken ill on his arrival at portsmouth, and could not proceed. he despatched the manuscript by a messenger with a letter to "good mr. reynoldes," who was a private secretary of essex. he was to cause a transcript to be made and have it delivered to some good printer, in good characters and with diligence to publish it. reynoldes was to confer with mr. greville (fulke greville, afterwards lord brooke) "whether he can be contented to suffer the two first letters of his name to be used in the inscription." "if he be unwilling," adds cuffe, "you may put r.b. which some no doubt will interprete to be beale, but it skills not." that this was a common practice is admitted by those acquainted with elizabethan literature. if any of bacon's writings were published prior to the trifle which appeared in as essaies, his name was suppressed, and it would be probable some other name would appear on the title-page. there is a translation of a classical author, bearing date , which is in the baconian style, but which need not be claimed for him without further investigation. the following suggestion is put forward with all diffidence, but after long and careful investigation. francis bacon was the author of two books which were published, one before he left england, and the other shortly after. the first is a philosophical discourse entitled "the anatomie of the minde." newlie made and set forth by t.r. imprinted at london by i.c. for andrew maunsell, , mo. the dedication is addressed to master christopher hatton, and the name of tho. rogers is attached to it. there was a thomas rogers who was chaplain to archbishop bancroft, and the book has been attributed to him, apparently only because no other of the same name was known. there was published in a translation by rogers of a latin book "of the ende of the world, etc." and there are other translations by him published between then and . there are several sermons, also, but the style of these, the matter, and the manner of treatment are quite distinct from those of the book under consideration. there is nothing of his which would support the assignment to him of "the anatomie of the mind." it is foreign to his style. having regard to the acknowledged custom of the times of putting names other than the author's on title-pages, there is no need for any apology for expressing doubt as to whether the book has been correctly placed to the credit of the bishop bancroft's chaplain. in the address to the reader the author says: "i dyd once for my profite in the universitie, draw into latin tables, which since for thy profite (christian reader) at the request of a gentleman of good credite and worship, i have englished and published in these two books." there is in existence a copy of the book with the printer's and other errors corrected in bacon's own handwriting. bearing date , imprinted at london for henri cockyn, is an octavo book styled, _"beautiful blossoms" gathered by john byshop from the best trees of all kyndes, divine, philosophicall, astronomicall, cosmographical, historical and humane that are growing in greece, latium, and arabia, and some also in vulgar orchards as wel fro these that in auncient time were grafted, as also from them which with skilful head and hand beene of late yeare's, yea, and in our dayes planted: to the unspeakable, both pleasure and profite of all such as wil vouchsafe to use them._ on the title-page are the words, "the first tome," but no further volume was published. as to who or what john byshop was there is no information available. his name appears on no other book. the preface is a gem of musical sounding words. it contains the sentence, "let them pass it over and read the rest which are all as plaine as dunstable way." bacon's home was within a few miles of dunstable way, which was the local term for the main road. it is impracticable here to give at length the grounds upon which it is believed that francis bacon was the author of these two books. each of them is an outpouring of classical lore, and is evidently written by some young man who had recently assimilated the writings of nearly every classical author. in this respect both correspond with the manner of "the french academie," to which the attention of the reader will shortly be directed, whilst in "the anatomie of the minde" the treatment of the subject is identical with that in the latter. failing actual proof, the circumstantial evidence that the two books are from the same pen is almost as strong as need be. some time in october, , sir amyas paulet would reach paris, accompanied by bacon. the only fragment of information which is given by his biographers of any occurrence during his stay there is obtained from rawley. he states that "sir amias paulet after a while held him fit to be entrusted with some message, or advertisement to the queen, which having performed with great approbation, he returned back into france again with intention to continue for some years there." in his absence in france, his father, the lord keeper, died. this was in february, - . if he returned shortly after news of his father's death reached him, his stay on the continent would cover about two and a-half years. as to what he was doing nothing is known, but pierre amboise states that "france, italy, and spain as the most civilised nations of the whole world were those whither his desire for knowledge carried him." footnotes: [ ] it was to sir amias that the custody of mary queen of scots was committed. chapter vi. bacon's "temporis partus maximus." francis bacon was at blois with sir amias paulet in . in the same year was published the first edition of the first part of "académie francoise par pierre de la primaudaye esceuyer, seignor dudict lieu et de la barrée, gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roy." the dedication, dated february, (_i.e._, ) is addressed, "au tres-chrestien roy de france et de polongne henry iii. de ce nom." the first english translation, by t. b., was "published in [ ], imprinted at london by edmund bollifant for g. bishop and ralph newbery." other parts of "the academy" followed at intervals of years, but the first and only complete edition in english bears date , and was printed for thomas adams. over the dedication is the well-known archer emblem. it is a thick folio volume, with , pages double columns. it may be termed the first encyclopædia which appeared in any language, and is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable productions of the elizabethan era. little is known of pierre de la primaudaye. the particulars for his biography in the "biographie nationale" seem to have been taken from references made to the author in the "french académie" itself. in the french edition, , there is a portrait of a man, and under it the words "anag. de l'auth. par la prierè dieu m'ayde." the following is an extract from the dedication:-- "the dinner of that prince of famous memorie, was a second table of salomon, vnto which resorted from euerie nation such as were best learned, that they might reape profit and instruction. yours, sir, being compassed about with those, who in your presence daily discourse of, and heare discoursed many graue and goodly matters, seemeth to be a schoole erected to teach men that are borne to vertue. and for myselfe, hauing so good hap during the assemblie of your estates at blois, as to be made partaker of the fruit gathered thereof, it came in my mind to offer vnto your maiestie a dish of diuers fruits, which i gathered in a platonicall garden or orchard, otherwise called an academie, where i was not long since with certaine yoong gentlemen of aniou my companions, discoursing togither of the institution in good maners, and of the means how all estates and conditions may liue well and happily. and although a thousand thoughts came then into my mind to hinder my purpose, as the small authoritie, which youth may or ought to haue in counsell amongst ancient men: the greatnes of the matter subject, propounded to be handled by yeeres of so small experience; the forgetfulness of the best foundations of their discourses, which for want of a rich and happie memorie might be in me: my iudgement not sound ynough, and my profession vnfit to set them downe in good order: briefly, the consideration of your naturall disposition and rare vertue, and of the learning which you receiuve both by reading good authors, and by your familiar communication with learned and great personages that are neere about your maiestie (whereby i seemed to oppose the light of an obscure day, full of clouds and darkness, to the bright beames of a very cleere shining sonne, and to take in hand, as we say, to teach minerua). i say all these reasons being but of too great weight to make me change my opinion, yet calling to mind manie goodlie and graue sentences taken out of sundry greeke and latine philosophers, as also the woorthie examples of the liues of ancient sages and famous men, wherewith these discourses were inriched, which might in delighting your noble mind renew your memorie with those notable sayings in the praise of vertue and dispraise of vice, which you alwaies loued to heare: and considering also that the bounty of artaxerxes that great monarke of the persians was reuiued in you, who receiued with a cheerfull countenance a present of water of a poore laborer, when he had no need of it, thinking to be as great an act of magnanimitie to take in good part, and to receiue cheerfully small presents offered with a hartie and good affection, as to giue great things liberally, i ouercame whatsoeuer would haue staied me in mine enterprise." it appears, therefore, that the author by good hap was a visitor at the court of henry iii. when at blois; that he was there studying with certain young gentlemen of anjou, his companions; that he was a youth, and of years of small experience; that his memory might not be sufficiently rich and happy, his judgment not enough, and his profession unfit in recording the discourses of himself and his companions. "the author to the reader" is an essay on philosophy, every sentence in which seems to have the same familiar sound as essays which subsequently appeared under another name. the contents of the several chapters are enumerated thus: "of man," "of the body and soule," etc. the first chapter contains a description of how the "academie" came about. an ancient wise gentleman of great calling having spent the greater part of his years in the service of two kings, and of his country, france, for many and good causes had withdrawn himself to his house. he thought that to content his mind, which always delighted in honest and vertuous things, he could not bring greater profit to the monarchie of france, than to lay open and preserve and keep youth from the corruption which resulted from the over great license and excessive liberty granted to them in the universities. he took unto his house four young gentlemen, with the consent of their parents who were distinguished noblemen. after he had shown these young men the first grounds of true wisdom, and of all necessary things for their salvation, he brought into his house a tutor of great learning and well reported of his good life and conversation, to whom he committed their instruction. after teaching them the latin tongue and some smattering of greek he propounded for their chief studies the moral philosophy of ancient sages and wise men, together with the understanding and searching out of histories which are the light of life. the four fathers, desiring to see what progress their sons had made, decided to visit them. and because they had small skill in the latin tongue, they determined to have their children discourse in their own natural tongue of all matters that might serve for the instruction and reformation of every estate and calling, in such order and method as they and their master might think best. it was arranged that they should meet in a walking place covered over with a goodly green arbour, and daily, except sundays, for three weeks, devote two hours in the morning and two hours after dinner to these discourses, the fathers being in attendance to listen to their sons. so interesting did these discussions become that the period was often extended to three or four hours, and the young men were so intent upon preparation for them that they would not only bestow the rest of the days, but oftentimes the whole night, upon the well studying of that which they proposed to handle. the author goes on to say:--"during which time it was my good hap to be one of the companie when they began their discourses, at which i so greatly wondered that i thought them worthy to be published abroad." from this it would appear that the author was a visitor, privileged, with the four fathers and the master, to listen to the discourses of these four young men. but, a little further on the position is changed; one of the four young men is, without any explanation, ignored, and his father disappointed! for the author takes his place, as will be seen from the following extract:-- "and thus all fower of us followed the same order daily until everie one in his course had intreated according to appointment, both by the precepts of doctrine, as also by the examples of the lives of ancient sages and famous men, of all things necessary for the institution of manners and happie life of all estates and callings in this french monarchie. but because i knowe not whether, in naming my companions by their proper names, supposing thereby to honour them as indeede they deserve it, i should displease them (which thing i would not so much as thinke) i have determined to do as they that play on a theater, who under borrowed maskes and disguised apparell, do represent the true personages of those whom they have undertaken to bring on the stage. i will therefore call them by names very agreeable to their skill and nature: the first aser which signifieth _felicity_: the second amana which is as much to say as _truth_: the third aram which noteth to us _highness_; and to agree with them as well in name as in education and behaviour. i will name myself achitob[ ] which is all one with _brother of goodness_. further more i will call and honour the proceeding and finishing of our sundry treatises and discourses with this goodlie and excellent title of academie, which was the ancient and renowned school amongst the greek philosophers, who were the first that were esteemed, and that the place where plato, xenophon, poleman, xenocrates, and many other excellent personages, afterward called academicks, did propound & discourse of all things meet for the instruction and teaching of wisdome: wherein we purposed to followe them to our power, as the sequele of our discourses shall make good proofe." and then the discourses commence. "love's labour's lost" was published in , and was the first quarto upon which the name of shakespeare was printed. the title-page states that it is "newly corrected and augmented," from which it may be inferred that there was a previous edition, but no copy of such is known. the commentators are in practical agreement that it was probably the first play written by the dramatist. there are differences of opinion as to the probable date when it was written. richard grant white believes this to be not later than , knight gives , but all this is conjecture. the play opens with a speech by ferdinand:-- "let fame that all hunt after in their lives, live registred upon our brazen tombes, and then grace us, in the disgrace of death: when spight of cormorant devouring time, th' endevour of this present breath may buy: that honour which shall bate his sythes keene edge, and make us heyres of all eternitie. therefore brave conquerours, for so you are, that warre against your own affections, and the huge armie of the worlds desires. our late edict shall strongly stand in force, navar shall be the wonder of the world. our court shall be a little achademe, still and contemplative in living art. you three, berowne, doumaine, and longavill, have sworne for three yeeres terme, to live with me, my fellow schollers, and to keepe those statutes that are recorded in this schedule heere. your oathes are past, and now subscribe your names; that his owne hand may strike his honour downe, that violates the smallest branch heerein: if you are arm'd to doe, as sworne to do, subscribe to your deepe oathes, and keepe it to." four young men in the french "academie" associated together, as in "love's labour lost," to war against their own affections and the whole army of the world's desires. dumaine, in giving his acquiescence to ferdinand, ends:-- "to love, to wealth, to pompe, i pine and die with all these living in philosophie." philosophie was the subject of study of the four young men to the "academie." berowne was a visitor, for he says:-- "i only swore to study with your grace and stay heere in your court for three yeeres' space." upon his demurring to subscribe to the oath as drawn, ferdinand retorts:-- well, sit you out: go home, berowne: adue." to which berowne replies:-- no, my good lord; i have sworn to stay with you." achitob was a visitor at the academie in france. there are other points of resemblance, but sufficient has been said to warrant consideration of the suggestion that the french "academie" contains the serious studies of the four young men whose experiences form the subject of the play. the parallels between passages in the shakespeare plays and the french "academie" are numerous, but they form no part of the present contention. one of these may, however, be mentioned. in the third tome the following passage occurs[ ]:-- psal. xix.: "it is not without cause that the prophet said (the heavens declare the glory of god, and the earth sheweth the workes of his handes) for thereby he evidently teacheth, as with the finger even to our eies, the great and admirable providence of god their creator; even as if the heavens should speake to anyone. in another place it is written (eccles. xliii.): (this high ornament, this cleere firmament, the beauty of the heaven so glorious to behold, tis a thing full of majesty)." on turning to the revised version of the bible it will be found that the first verse is thus translated: "the pride of the height, the cleare firmament the beauty of heaven with his glorious shew." the rendering of the text in "the french academy" is strongly suggestive of hamlet's famous soliloquy. "this most excellent canopy, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fritted with golden fire, why it appears to me no other than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." the author has forsaken the common-place rendering of the apocrypha, and has adopted the same declamatory style which shakespeare uses. it is strongly reminiscent of hamlet's famous speech, act ii., scene ii. only one of the shakespeare commentators makes any reference to the work. the rev. joseph hunter, writing in , points out that the dramatist in "as you like it," describing the seven ages of man, follows the division made in the chapter on "the ages of man" in the "academie."[ ] the suggestion now made is that the french "academie" was written by bacon, who is represented in the dialogues as achitob--the first part when he was about years of age, that he continued it until, in , the complete work was published. in the dedication the author describes himself as a youth of immature experience, but the contents bear evidence of a wide knowledge of classical authors and their works, a close acquaintance with the ancient philosophies, and a store of general information which it would be impossible for any ordinary youth of such an age to possess. but was not the boy who at years of age left cambridge disagreeing with the teaching there of aristotle's philosophy, and whose mental qualities and acquirements provoked as "the natural ejaculation of the artist's emotion" the significant words, "_si tabula daretur digna animum mallem_," altogether abnormal? was the "french academie" bacon's _temporis partus maximus_? it is only in a letter written to father fulgentio about that this work is heard of. bacon writes: "equidem memini me, quadraginta abhinc annis, juvenile opusculum circa has res confecisse, quod magna prorsus fiducia et magnifico titulo 'temporis partum maximum' inscripsi."[ ] spedding says: "this was probably the work of which henry cuffe (the great oxford scholar who was executed in as one of the chief accomplices in the earl of essex's treason) was speaking when he said that 'a fool could not have written it and a wise man would not.' bacon's intimacy with essex had begun about thirty-five years before this letter was written." forty years from would carry back to , the year preceding the date of publication of the first edition in english. if cuffe's remark was intended to apply to the "french academy," it is just such a criticism as the book might be expected to provoke. the first edition of "the french academie" in english appeared in , the second in , the third (two parts) in , the fourth (three parts) in , the fifth in (all quartos), then, in , the large folio edition containing the fourth part "never before published in english." it appears to have been more popular in england than it was in france. brunet in his edition mentions neither the book nor the author, primaudaye. the question as to whether there was at this time a reading public in england sufficiently wide to absorb an edition in numbers large enough to make the publication of this and similar works possible at a profit will be dealt with hereafter. in anticipation it may be said that the balance of probabilities justifies the conjecture that the issue of each of these editions involved someone in loss, and the folio edition involved considerable loss. a comparison between the french and english publications points to both having been written by an author who was a master of each language rather than that the latter was a mere translation of the former. the version is so natural in idiom and style that it appears to be an original rather than a translation. in how many men were there who could write such english? the marginal notes are in the exact style of bacon. "a similitude"--"a notable comparison"--occur frequently just as the writer finds them again and again in bacon's handwriting in volumes which he possesses. the book abounds in statements, phrases, and quotations which are to be found in bacon's letters and works. one significant fact must be mentioned. the first letter of the text in the dedication in the first english translation is the letter s. it is printed from a wood block (fig. i.). thirty-nine years after (in ) when the last edition of bacon's essays--and, with the exception of the small pamphlet containing his versification of certain psalms, the last publication during his life--was printed, that identical wood block (fig. ii.) was again used to print the first letter in the dedication of that book. every defect and peculiarity in the one will be found in the other. a search through many hundreds of books printed during these thirty-nine years-- to --has failed to find it used elsewhere, except on one occasion, either then, before, or since. did bacon mark his first work on philosophy and his last book by printing the first letter in each from the same block?[ ] [illustration: _fig. i._ the first letter in the text of the dedication of the st edition of the english translation of the "french academie," = =. printed at london by g. bollifant. the block is also used in a similar manner in the nd edition, = =. londini impensis, john bishop.] [illustration: _fig. ii._ the first letter in the text of the dedication of the = = edition of bacon's essays, printed in london, by john haviland.] _both letters were printed from the same block._ footnotes: [ ] in the "gesta grayorum" one of the articles which the knights of the helmet were required to vow to keep, each kissing his helmet as he took his vow, was "item--every knight of this order shall endeavour to add conference and experiment to reading; and therefore shall not only read and peruse 'guizo,' 'the french academy,' 'galiatto the courtier,' 'plutarch,' 'the arcadia,' and the neoterical writers from time to time," etc. the "gesta grayorum," which was written in , was not published until . the manuscript was probably incorrectly read as to the titles of the books. "galiatto," apparently, should be "galateo," described in a letter of gabriel harvey as "the italian archbishop brave galateo." the "courtier" is the italian work by castiglione which was englished by sir thomas hoby. "guizo" should be "guazzo." stefano guazzo's "civil conversation"--four books--was englished by g. pettie and young. [ ] "hit" is used by chaucer as the past participle of "hide." the name thus yields a suggestive anagram, "bacohit." [ ] edition, page . [ ] in addition to this and to the "gesta grayorum" ( ) i have only been able to find two references to "the french academy" in the works of english writers. j. payne collier, in his "poetical decameron," vol. ii., page , draws attention to the epistle "to the christian reader" prefixed to the second part, and suggests that the initials t.b. which occur at the end of the dedicatory epistle stand for thomas beard, the author of "theatre of god's judgments." collier does not appear to have read "the french academy." dibdin, in "notes on more's utopia," says, "but i entreat the reader to examine (if he be fortunate enough to possess the book) "the french academy of primaudaye," a work written in a style of peculiarly impressive eloquence, and which, not very improbably, was the foundation of derham's and paley's "natural theology." [ ] "it being now forty years as i remember, since i composed a juvenile work on this subject which with great confidence and a magnificent title i named "the greatest birth of time." [ ] the block was used on page of the quarto edition of william camden's "britannia," published in london by george bishop, who was the publisher of the , , and editions of "the french academy." there is a marginal note at the foot of the imprint of the block commencing "r. bacons." francis bacon is known to have assisted camden in the preparation of this work. the manuscript bears evidence of the fact in his handwriting. chapter vii. bacon's first allegorical romance. there is another work which it is impossible not to associate with this period, and that is john barclay's "argenis." it is little better known than is "the french academy," and yet cowper pronounced it the most amusing romance ever written. cardinal richelieu is said to have been extremely fond of reading it, and to have derived thence many of his political maxims. it is an allegorical novel. it is proposed now only to mention some evidence connected with the "argenis" which supports the contention that the english edition contains the original composition, and that its author was young francis bacon. the first edition of the "argenis" in latin was published in . the authority to the publisher, nicholas buon, to print and sell the "argenis" is dated the st july, , and was signed by barclay at rome. the royal authority is dated on the st august following. barclay's death took place between these dates, on the th of august, at rome. it is reported that the cause of death was stone, but in an appreciation of him, published by his friend, ralph thorie, his death is attributed to poison. the work is an example of the highest type of latinity. so impressed was cowper with its style that he stated that it would not have dishonoured tacitus himself. a translation in spanish was published in , and in italian in . the latin version was frequently reprinted during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--perhaps more frequently than any other book. in a letter dated th may, , chamberlain, writing to carleton, says: "the king has ordered ben jonson to translate the 'argenis,' but he will not be able to equal the original." on the nd october, , ben jonson entered a translation in stationers' hall, but it was never published. about that time there was a fire in jonson's house, in which it is said some manuscripts were destroyed; but it is a pure assumption that the "argenis" was one of these. in an english translation appeared by sir robert le grys, knight, and the verses by thomas may, esquire. the title-page bears the statement: "the prose upon his majesty's command." there is a clavis appended, also stated to be "published at his majesties command." it was printed by felix kyngston for richard mughten and henry seile. in the address to "the understanding reader" le grys says, "what then should i say? except it were to entreate thee, that where my english phrase doth not please thee, thou wilt compare it with the originall latin and mend it. which i doe not speak as thinking it impossible, but as willing to have it done, for the saving me a labour, who, if his majesty had not so much hastened the publishing it, would have reformed some things in it, that did not give myselfe very full satisfaction." in king james ordered a translation of the "argenis." in [ ] charles i. was so impatient to have a translation that he hastened the publication, thus preventing the translator from revising his work. three years previously, however, in --if the date may be relied on--there was published as printed by g. p. for henry seile a translation by kingesmill long. james died on the th march, . the "argenis" may not have been published in his lifetime; but if the date be correct, three or four years before charles hastened the publication of le grys's translation, this far superior one with kingesmill long's name attached to it could have been obtained from h. seile. surely the publisher would have satisfied the king's impatience by supplying him with a copy of the edition had it been on sale. the publication of a translation of the "argenis" must have attracted attention. is it possible that it could have been in existence and not brought to the notice of the king? there is something here that requires explanation. the epistle dedicatorie of the edition is written in the familiar style of another pen, although it bears the name of kingesmill long. the title-page states that it is "faithfully translated out of latine into english," but it is not directly in the epistle dedicatorie spoken of as a translation. the following extract implies that the work had been lying for years waiting publication:-- "this rude piece, such as it is, hath long lyen by me, since it was finished; i not thinking it worthy to see the light. i had always a desire and hope to have it undertaken by a more able workman, that our nation might not be deprived of the use of so excellent a story: but finding none in so long time to have done it; and knowing that it spake not _english_, though it were a rich jewell to the learned linguist, yet it was close lockt from all those, to whom education had not given more languages, than nature tongues: i have adventured to become the key to this piece of hidden treasure, and have suffered myselfe to be overruled by some of my worthy friends, whose judgements i have alwayes esteemed, sending it abroad (though coursely done) for the delight and use of others." not a word about the author! the translations, said to be by thomas may, of the latin verses in the are identical with those in the edition, although kingesmill long, on the title-page, appears as the translator. nothing can be learnt as to who or what long was. over lines "authori," signed ovv: fell:[ ] in the edition is one of the well-known light and dark a devices. this work is written in flowing and majestic english; the edition in the cramped style of translation. the copy bearing date , to which reference has been made, belonged to john henry shorthouse. he has made this note on the front page: "jno. barclay's description of himself under the person of nicopompus argenis, p. ." this is the description to which he alludes:-- "him thus boldly talking, nicopompus could no longer endure: he was a man who from his infancy loved learning; but who disdaining to be nothing but a booke-man had left the schooles very young, that in the courts of kings and princes, he might serve his apprenticeship in publicke affairs; so he grew there with an equall abilitie, both in learning and imployment, his descent and disposition fitting him for that kind of life: wel esteemed of many princes, and especially of meleander, whose cause together with the rest of the princes, he had taken upon him to defend." this description is inaccurate as applied to john barclay, but in every detail it describes francis bacon. a comparison has been made between the editions of and with the latin edition. it leaves little room for doubting that the is the original work. throughout the latin appears to follow it rather than to be the leader; whilst the edition follows the latin closely. in some cases the word used in the edition has been incorrectly translated into the edition, and the latin word re-translated literally and incorrectly in view of the sense in the edition. but space forbids this comparison being further followed; suffice it to say that everything points to the edition being the original work. as to the date of composition much may be said; but the present contention is that "the french academie," "the argenis," and "love's labour's lost" are productions from the same pen, and that they all represent the work of francis bacon probably between the years and . at any rate, the first-named was written whilst he was in france, and the others were founded on the incidents and experience obtained during his sojourn there. footnotes: [ ] one copy of this edition bears the date . [ ] probably owen felltham, author of "felltham's resolves." chapter viii. bacon in france, - . this brilliant young scholar landed with sir amias paulet at calais on the th of september, , and with him went straight to the court of henry iii. of france. it is remarkable that neither montagu, spedding, hepworth dixon, nor any other biographer seems to have thought it worth while to consider under what influences he was brought when he arrived there at the most impressionable period of his life. hepworth dixon, without stating his authority, says that he "quits the galleries of the louvre and st. cloud with his morals pure," but nothing more. and yet francis bacon arrived in france at the most momentous epoch in the history of french literature. this boy, with his marvellous intellect--the same intellect which nearly half a century later produced the "novum organum"--with a memory saturated with the records of antiquity and with the writings of the classical authors, with an industry beyond the capacity and a mind beyond the reach of his contemporaries, skilled in the teachings of the philosophers, with independence of thought and a courage which enabled him to condemn the methods of study followed at the university where he had spent three years; this boy who had a "beam of knowledge derived from god" upon him, who "had not his knowledge from books, but from some grounds and notions from himself," and above and beyond all who was conscious of his powers and had unbounded confidence in his capacity for using them; this boy walked beside the english ambassador elect into the highest circles of french society at the time when the most important factors of influence were ronsard and his confrères of the pléiade. he had left behind him in his native country a language crude and almost barbaric, incapable of giving expression to the knowledge which he possessed and the thoughts which resulted therefrom. at this time there were few books written in the english tongue which could make any pretence to be considered literature: sir thomas eliot's "the governor," robert ascham's "the schoolmaster," and thomas wright's "arts of rhetoric," almost exhaust the list. thynne's edition, , and lidgate's edition, , of chaucer's works are not intelligible. only in the edition can the great poet be read with any understanding. the work of re-casting the poems for this edition was bacon's, and he is the man referred to in the following lines, which are prefixed to it:-- _the reader to geffrey chaucer._ _rea._--where hast thou dwelt, good geffrey al this while, unknown to us save only by thy bookes? _chau._--in haulks, and hernes, god wot, and in exile, where none vouchsaft to yeeld me words or lookes: till one which saw me there, and knew my friends, did bring me forth: such grace sometimes god sends. _rea._--but who is he that hath thy books repar'd, and added moe, whereby thou are more graced? _chau._--the selfe same man who hath no labor spar'd, to helpe what time and writers had defaced: and made old words, which were unknoun of many, so plaine, that now they may be knoun of any. _rea._--well fare his heart: i love him for thy sake, who for thy sake hath taken all this pains. _chau._--would god i knew some means amends to make, that for his toile he might receive some gains. but wot ye what? i know his kindnesse such, that for my good he thinks no pains too much: and more than that; if he had knoune in time, he would have left no fault in prose nor rime. there is a catalogue of the library of sir thomas smith[ ] on august , , in his gallery at hillhall. it was said to contain nearly a thousand books. of these only five were written in the english language. under theologici, k. henry viii. book; under juris civilis, littleton's tenures, an old abridgement of statutes; under historiographi, hall's chronicles, and fabian's chronicles and the decades of p. martyr; under mathematica, the art of navigation. the remainder are in greek, latin, french, and italian. burghley's biographer states that burghley "never read any books or praiers but in latin, french, or italian, very seldom in englishe." at this time francis bacon thought in latin, for his mother tongue was wholly insufficient. there is abundant proof of this in his own handwriting. under existing conditions there could be no english literature worthy of the name. if a gentleman of the court wrote he either suppressed his writings or suffered them to be published without his name to them, as it was a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned and to show himself amorous of any good art. here is where spedding missed his way and never recovered himself. deep as is the debt of gratitude due to him for his devoted labours in the preparation of "bacon's life and letters" and in the edition of his works, it must be asserted that he accomplished this work without seeing francis bacon. there was a vista before young bacon's eyes from which the practice of the law and civil dignities were absent. he arrived at the french court at the psychological moment when an object-lesson met his eyes which had a more far-reaching effect on the language and literature of the anglo-saxon race than any or all other influences that have conspired to raise them to the proud position which to-day they occupy. it is necessary briefly to explain the position of the french language and literature at this juncture. the french renaissance of literature had its beginning in the early years of the sixteenth century. it had been preceded by that of italy, which opened in the fourteenth century, and reached its limit with ariosto and tasso, macchiavelli and guicciardini during the sixteenth century. towards the end of the fifteenth century modern french poetry may be said to have had its origin in villon and french prose in comines. the style of the former was artificial and his poems abounded in recurrent rhymes and refrains. the latter had peculiarities of diction which were only compensated for by weight of thought and simplicity of expression. clement marot, who followed, stands out as one of the first landmarks in the french renaissance. his graceful style, free from stiffness and monotony, earned for him a popularity which even the brilliancy of the pléiade did not extinguish, for he continued to be read with genuine admiration for nearly two centuries. he was the founder of a school of which mellia de st. gelais, the introducer of the sonnet into france, was the most important member. rabelais and his followers concurrently effected a complete revolution in fiction. marguerite of navarre, who is principally known as the author of "the heptameron," maintained a literary court in which the most celebrated men of the time held high place. it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that the great movement took place in french literature which, if that which occurred in the same country three hundred years subsequently be excepted, is without parallel in literary history. the pléiade consisted of a group of seven men and boys who, animated by a sincere and intelligent love of their native language, banded themselves together to remodel it and its literary forms on the methods of the two great classical tongues, and to reinforce it with new words from them. they were not actuated by any desire for gain. in jean daurat, then years of age, was professor of greek at le collège de coqueret in paris. amongst those who attended his classes were five enthusiastic, ambitious youths whose ages varied from seventeen to twenty-four. they were pierre de ronsard, joachim du bellay, remy belleau, antoine de baïf, and etienne jodelle. they and their professor associated themselves together and received as a colleague pontus de tyard, who was twenty-eight. they formed a band of seven renovators, to whom their countrymen applied the cognomen of the pléiade, by which they will ever be known. realising the defects and possibilities of their language, they recognised that by appropriations from the greek and latin languages, and from the melodious forms of the italian poetry, they might reform its defects and develop its possibilities so completely that they could place at the service of great writers a vehicle for expression which would be the peer if not the superior of any language, classical or modern. it was a bold project for young men, some of whom were not out of their teens, to venture on. that they met with great success is beyond question; the extent of that success it is not necessary to discuss here. the main point to be emphasised is that it was a deliberate scheme, originated, directed, and matured by a group of little more than boys. the french renaissance was not the result of a spontaneous bursting out on all sides of genius. it was wrought out with sheer hard work, entailing the mastering of foreign languages, and accompanied by devotion and without hope of pecuniary gain. the manifesto of the young band was written by joachim de bellay in , and was entitled, "la défense et illustration de la langue francaise." in the following year appeared ronsard's ode--the first example of the new method. pierre de ronsard entered court life when ten years old. in attendance on french ambassadors he visited scotland and england, where he remained for some time. a severe illness resulted in permanent deafness and compelled him to abandon his profession, when he turned to literature. although du bellay was the originator of the scheme, ronsard became the director and the acknowledged leader of the band. his accomplishments place him in the first rank of the poets of the world. reference would be out of place here to the movement which was after his death directed by malherbe against ronsard's reputation and fame as a poet and his eventual restoration by the disciples of sainte beuve and the followers of hugo. it is desirable, however, to allude to other great frenchmen whose labours contributed in other directions to promote the growth of french literature. jean calvin, a native of noyon, in picardy, had published in latin, in , when only twenty-seven years of age, his greatest work, both from a literary and theological point of view, "the institution of the christian religion," which would be accepted as the product of full maturity of intellect rather than the firstfruits of the career of a youth. what the pléiade had done to create a french language adequate for the highest expression of poetry calvin did to enable facility in argument and discussion. a latin scholar of the highest order, avoiding in his compositions a tendency to declamation, he developed a stateliness of phrase which was marked by clearness and simplicity. théodore beza, historian, translator, and dramatist, was another contributor to the literature of this period. jacques amyot had commenced his translations from "ethiopica," treating of the royal and chaste loves of theagenes and chariclea three years before du bellay's manifesto appeared. montaigne, referring to his translation of plutarch, accorded to him the palm over all french writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of his vocabulary, in which he surpassed all others, but for his industry and depth of learning. in another field michel eyquem sieur de montaigne had arisen. his moral essays found a counterpart in the biographical essays of the abbé de brantôme. agrippa d'aubigné, prose writer, historian, and poet; guillaume de saluste du bartas, the protestant ronsard whose works were more largely translated into english than those of any other french writer; philippes desportes and others might be mentioned as forming part of that brilliant circle of writers who had during a comparatively short period helped to achieve such a high position for the language and literature of france. * * * * * in , when francis bacon arrived in france, the fame of the pléiade was at its zenith. du bellay and jodelle were dead, but the fruit of their labours and of those of their colleagues was evoking the admiration of their countrymen. the popularity of ronsard, the prince of poets and the poet of princes, was without precedent. it is said that the king had placed beside his throne a state chair for ronsard to occupy. poets and men of letters were held in high esteem by their countrymen. in england, for a gentleman to be amorous of any learned art was held to be discreditable, and any proclivities in this direction had to be hidden under assumed names or the names of others. in france it was held to be discreditable for a gentleman not to be amorous of the learned arts. the young men of the pléiade were all of good family, and all came from cultured homes. marguerite of navarre had set the example of attracting poets and writers to her court and according honours to them on account of their achievements. the kings of france had adopted a similar attitude. during the same period in england henry viii., mary, and elizabeth had been following other courses. they had given no encouragement to the pursuit of literature. notwithstanding the repetition by historians of the assertion that the good queen bess was a munificent patron of men of letters, literature flourished in her reign in spite of her action and not by its aid. bacon implies this in the opening sentences of the second book of the "advancement of learning." he speaks of queen elizabeth as being "a sojourner in the world in respect of her unmarried life, rather than an inhabitant. she hath indeed adorned her own time and many waies enricht it; but in truth to your majesty, whom god hath blest with so much royall issue worthy to perpetuate you for ever; whose youthfull and fruitfull bed, doth yet promise more children; it is very proper, not only to iradiate as you doe your own times, but also to extend your cares to those acts which succeeding ages may cherish, and eternity itself behold: amongst which, if my affection to learning doe not transport me, there is none more worthy, or more noble, than the endowment of the world with sound and fruitfull advancement of learning: for why should we erect unto ourselves some few authors, to stand like hercules columnes beyond which there should be no discovery of knowledge, seeing we have your majesty as a bright and benigne starre to conduct and prosper us in this navigation." as elizabeth had been unfruitful in her body, and james fruitful, so had she been unfruitful in encouraging the advancement of learning, but the appeal is made to james that he, being blessed with a considerable issue, should also have an issue by the endowment of learning. what must have been the effect on the mind of this brilliant young englishman, francis bacon, when he entered into this literary atmosphere so different from that of the court which he had left behind him? there was hardly a classical writer whose works he had not read and re-read. he was familiar with the teachings of the schoolmen; imbued with a deep religious spirit, he had mastered the principles of their faiths and the subtleties of their disputations. the intricacies of the known systems of philosophies had been laid bare before his penetrating intellect. with the mysteries of mathematics and numbers he was familiar. what had been discovered in astronomy, alchemy and astrology he had absorbed; however technical might be a subject, he had mastered its details. in architecture the works of vitruvius had been not merely read but criticised with the skill of an expert. medicine, surgery--every subject--he had made himself master of. in fact, when he asserted that he had taken all knowledge to be his province he spoke advisedly and with a basis of truth which has never until now been recognised. the youth of who possessed the intellect, the brain and the memory which jointly produced the "novum organum," whose mind was so abnormal that the artist painting his portrait was impelled to place round it "the significant words," "_si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem_," who had taken all knowledge to be his province, was capable of any achievement of the admirable crichton. and this youth it was who in passed from a country of literary and intellectual torpor into the brilliancy of the companionship of pierre de ronsard and his associates. it is one of the most stupendous factors in his life. something happened to him before his return to england which affected the whole of his future life. it may be considered a wild assertion to make, but the time will come when its truth will be proved, that "the anatomie of the minde," "beautiful blossoms," and "the french academy," are the product of one mind, and that same mind produced the "arte of english poesie," "an apology for poetrie," by sir john harrington, and "the defense of poetry," by sir philip sydney. the former three were written before and place the philosopher before the poet; the latter three were written after and place the poet--the creator--before the philosopher. francis bacon had recognised that the highest achievement was the act of creation. henceforth he lived to create. sir nicholas bacon died on or about the th of february, - . how or where this news reached francis is not recorded, but on the th of the following march he left paris for england, after a stay of two and a-half years on the continent. he brought with him to the queen a despatch from sir amias paulet, in which he was spoken of as being "of great hope, endued with many and singular parts," and one who, "if god gave him life, would prove a very able and sufficient subject to do her highness good and acceptable service."[ ] footnotes: [ ] sir thomas smith ( - ) was secretary of state under edward vi. and elizabeth--a good scholar and philosopher. he, when greek lecturer and orator at cambridge, with john cheke, introduced, in spite of strong opposition, the correct way of speaking greek, restoring the pronunciation of the ancients. [ ] state paper office; french correspondence. chapter ix. bacon's suit on his return to england, . spedding states that the earliest composition of bacon which he had been able to discover is a letter written in his th year from grays inn. from that time forward, he continues, compositions succeed each other without any considerable interval, and in following them we shall accompany him step by step through his life. what are the compositions which spedding places as being written but not published up to the year , when the first small volume of essays containing less than , words was issued from the press? these are they:-- notes on the state of christendom[ ] (date to ). letter of advice to the queen ( - ). an advertisement touching the controversies of the church of england ( - ). speeches written for some court device, namely, mr. bacon in praise of knowledge, and mr. bacon's discourse in praise of his sovereign ( - ). certain observations made upon a libel published this present year, . a true report of the detestable treason intended by dr. roderigo lopez, . gesta grayorum, , parts of which are printed by spedding in type denoting doubtful authorship. bacon's device, - . three letters to the earl of rutland on his travels, - . that is all! these are the compositions which follow each other without considerable interval, and by which we are to accompany him step by step through those seventeen years which should be the most important years in a man's life! he could have turned them out in ten days or a fortnight with ease. we expect from mr. spedding bread, and he gives us a stone! this brilliant young man, who, when years of age, left cambridge, having possessed himself of all the knowledge it could afford to a student, who had travelled in france, spain and italy to "polish his mind and mould his opinion by intercourse with all kinds of foreigners," how was he occupying himself during what should be the most fruitful years of his life? following his profession at the bar? his affections did not that way tend. spedding expresses the opinion that he had a distaste for his profession, and, writing of the circumstances with which he was surrounded in , says: "i do not find that he was getting into practice. his main object still was to find ways and means for prosecuting his great philosophical enterprise." what was this enterprise? "i confess that i have as vast contemplative ends as i have moderate means," he says, writing to burghley, "for i have taken all knowledge to be my province." this means more than mere academic philosophy. in , when bacon was put forward and upheld for a year as a candidate for the post of attorney-general, spedding writes of him; "he had had little or no practice in the courts; what proof he had given of professional proficiency was confined to his readings and exercises in grays inn.... law, far from being his only, was not even his favourite study; ... his head was full of ideas so new and large that to most about him they must have seemed visionary." writing of him in spedding says: "the strongest point against bacon's pretensions for the attorneyship was his want of practice. his opponents said that 'he had never entered the place of battle.'[ ] whether this was because he could not find clients or did not seek them i cannot say." in order to meet the objection, bacon on the th january, - , made his first pleading, and burghley sent his secretary "to congratulate unto him the first fruits of his public practice." there is one other misconception to be corrected. it is urged that bacon was, during this period, engrossed in parliamentary life. from to five parliaments were summoned. bacon sat in each. in his twenty-fifth year he was elected member for melcombe, in dorsetshire. in the parliament of he sat for taunton, in that of for liverpool, in that of - for middlesex, and in for ipswich. but the sittings of these parliaments were not of long duration, and the speeches which he delivered and the meetings of committees upon which he was appointed would absorb but a small portion of his time. it must be patent, therefore, that spedding does not account for his occupations from his return to england in until , when the first small volume of his essays was published. during the whole of this period bacon was in monetary difficulties, and yet there is no evidence that he was living a life of dissipation or even of extravagance. on the contrary, all testimony would point to the conclusion that he was following the path of a strictly moral and studious young man. on his return to england he took lodgings in coney court, grays inn. there anthony found him when he returned from abroad. there are no data upon which to form any reliable opinion as to the amount of his income at this time. rawley states that sir nicholas bacon had collected a considerable sum of money which he had separated with intention to have made a competent purchase of land for the livelihood of his youngest son, but the purchase being unaccomplished at his death, francis received only a fifth portion of the money dividable, by which means he lived in some straits and necessities in his younger years. it is not clear whether the "money dividable" was only that separated by sir nicholas, or whether he left other sums which went to augment the fund divisible amongst the brothers. his other children were well provided for. francis was not, however, without income. sir nicholas had left certain manors, etc., in herts to his sons anthony and francis in tail male, remainder to himself and his heirs. lady ann bacon had vested an estate called markes, in essex, in francis, and there is a letter, dated th april, , from anthony to his mother urging her to concur in its sale, so that the proceeds might be applied to the relief of his brother's financial position.[ ] lady bacon lived at gorhambury. she was not extravagant, and yet in she was so impoverished that captain allen, in writing to anthony, speaking of his mother, lady bacon, says she "also saith her jewels be spent for you, and that she borrowed the last money of seven several persons." whatever her resources were, they had by then been exhausted for her sons. anthony was apparently a man of considerable means. he was master of the manor and priory of redburn, of the manor of abbotsbury, minchinbury and hores, in the parish of barley, in the county of hertford; of the brightfirth wood, merydan-meads, and pinner-stoke farms, in the county of middlesex.[ ] but within a few years after his return to england anthony was borrowing money wherever he could. mother and brother appear to have exhausted their resources and their borrowing capabilities. there is an account showing that in eighteen months, about , anthony lent francis £ , equivalent to nearly £ , at to-day's value. in francis was arrested by the sheriff for a debt of £ , for which a money-lender had obtained judgment against him, and he was cast into the tower. where had all the money gone? there is no adequate explanation. * * * * * the first letter of francis bacon's which spedding met with, to which reference has already been made, is dated th july, , to mr. doylie, and is of little importance. the six letters which follow--all there are between and [ ]--relate to one subject, and are of great significance. the first is dated from grays inn, th september, , to lady burghley. in it young francis, now years of age, makes this request: "that it would please your ladyship in your letters wherewith you visit my good lord to vouchsafe the mention and recommendation of my suit; wherein your ladyship shall bind me more unto you than i can look ever to be able to sufficiently acknowledge." the next letter--written on the same day--is addressed to lord burghley. its object is thus set forth:-- "my letter hath no further errand but to commend unto your lordship the remembrance of my suit which then i moved unto you, whereof it also pleased your lordship to give me good hearing so far forth as to promise to tender it unto her majesty, and withal to add in the behalf of it that which i may better deliver by letter than by speech, which is, that although it must be confessed that the request is rare and unaccustomed, yet if it be observed how few there be which fall in with the study of the common laws either being well left or friended, or at their own free election, or forsaking likely success in other studies of more delight and no less preferment, or setting hand thereunto early without waste of years upon such survey made, it may be my case may not seem ordinary, no more than my suit, and so more beseeming unto it. as i force myself to say this in excuse of my motion, lest it should appear unto your lordship altogether undiscreet and unadvised, so my hope to obtain it resteth only upon your lordship's good affection towards me and grace with her majesty, who methinks needeth never to call for the experience of the thing, where she hath so great and so good of the person which recommendeth it." what was this suit? spedding cannot suggest any explanation. he says: "what the particular employment was for which he hoped i cannot say; something probably connected with the service of the crown, to which the memory of his father, an old and valued servant prematurely lost, his near relationship to the lord treasurer, and the personal notice which he had himself received from the queen, would naturally lead him to look.... the proposition, whatever it was, having been explained to burghley in conversation, is only alluded to in these letters. it seems to have been so far out of the common way as to require an apology, and the terms of the apology imply that it was for some employment as a lawyer. and this is all the light i can throw upon it." subsequently spedding says the motion was one[ ] "which would in some way have made it unnecessary for him to follow 'a course of practice,' meaning, i presume, ordinary practice at the bar." another expression in the letter makes it clear that the object of the suit was an experiment. the queen could not have "experience of the thing," and bacon solicited burghley's recommendation, because she would not need the experience if he, so great and so good, vouched for it. burghley appears to have tendered the suit to the queen, for there is a letter dated th october, , addressed to him by bacon, commencing: "your lordship's comfortable relation to her majesty's gracious opinion and meaning towards me, though at that time your leisure gave me not leave to show how i was affected therewith, yet upon every representation thereof it entereth and striketh so much more deeply into me, as both my nature and duty presseth me to return some speech of thankfulness." spedding remarks thereon: "it seems that he had spoken to burghley on the subject and made some overture, which burghley undertook to recommend to the queen; and that the queen, who though slow to bestow favours was careful always to encourage hopes, entertained the motion graciously and returned a favourable answer. the proposition, whatever it was, having been explained to burghley in conversation, is only alluded to in these letters." spedding dismisses these three letters in lines of comment, which contain the extracts before set out. he regards the matter as of slight consequence, and admits that he can throw no light upon it. but he points out that it was "so far out of the common way as to require an apology." surely he has not well weighed the terms of the apology when he says they "imply that it was for some employment as a lawyer." there had been a conversation between bacon and burghley during which bacon had submitted a project to the accomplishment of which he was prepared to devote his life in the queen's service. it necessitated his abandoning the profession of the law. apparently burghley had remonstrated with him, in the manner of experienced men of the world, against forsaking a certain road and avenue to preferment in favour of any course rare and unaccustomed. referring in his letter to this, bacon's parenthetical clause beginning "either being well left or friended," etc., is confession and avoidance. in effect he says:--few study the common laws who have influence; few at their own free election; few desert studies of more delight and no less preferment; and few devote themselves to that study from their earliest years. since there are few who, having my opportunities, devote themselves to the study of the common laws, my position in so doing would not be an ordinary one, no more than is my suit. therefore, why should i, having your [burleigh's] influence to help me, sacrifice my great intellectual capabilities fitting me to accomplish my great contemplative ends? why should i sacrifice them to a study of the common laws? the sentence may be otherwise construed, but in any case it involves an apology for the abandonment of the profession which had been chosen for him. the next letter is addressed to the right honourable sir francis walsingham, principal secretary to her majesty, and is dated from grays inn, th of august, . spedding's comment on it is as follows:-- "for all this time, it seems, the suit (whatever it was) which he had made to her through burghley in remained in suspense, neither granted nor denied, and the uncertainty prevented him from settling his course of life. from the following letter to walsingham we may gather two things more concerning it: it was something which had been objected to as unfit for so young a man; and which would in some way have made it unnecessary for him to follow 'a course of practice'--meaning, i presume, ordinary practice at the bar." this is the letter:-- "it may please your honour to give me leave amidst your great and diverse business to put you in remembrance of my poor suit, leaving the time unto your honour's best opportunity and commodity. i think the objection of my years will wear away with the length of my suit. the very stay doth in this respect concern me, because i am thereby hindered to take a course of practice which, by the leave of god, if her majesty like not my suit, i must and will follow: not for any necessity of estate, but for my credit sake, which i know by living out of action will wear. i spake when the court was at theball's to mr. vice-chamberlain,[ ] who promised me his furderance; which i did lest he mought be made for some other. if it may please your honour, who as i hear hath great interest in him, to speak with him in it, i think he will be fast mine." spedding remarks: "this is the last we hear of this suit, the nature and fate of which must both be left to conjecture. with regard to its fate, my own conjecture is that he presently gave up all hope of success in it, and tried instead to obtain through his interest at court some furtherance in the direct line of his profession." he adds: "the solid grounds on which bacon's pretensions rested had not yet been made manifest to the apprehension of bench and bar; his mind was full of matters with which they could have no sympathy, and the shy and studious habits which we have seen so offend mr. faunt would naturally be misconstrued in the same way by many others."[ ] this passage refers to a letter to burghley dated the th of the following may, _i.e._, , from which it will be seen that the last had not been heard of the motion. burghley had been remonstrating with bacon as to reports which had come to him of his nephew's proceedings. bacon writes:-- "i take it as an undoubted sign of your lordship's favour unto me that being hardly informed of me you took occasion rather of good advice than of evil opinion thereby. and if your lordship had grounded only upon the said information of theirs, i mought and would truly have upholden that few of the matters were justly objected; as the very circumstances do induce in that they were delivered by men that did misaffect me and besides were to give colour to their own doings. but because your lordship did mingle therewith both a late motion of mine own and somewhat which you had otherwise heard, i know it to be my duty (and so do i stand affected) rather to prove your lordship's admonition effectual in my doings hereafter than causeless by excusing what is past. and yet (with your lordship's pardon humbly asked) it may please you to remember that i did endeavour to set forth that said motion in such sort as it mought breed no harder effect than a denial, and i protest simply before god that i sought therein an ease in coming within bars, and not any extraordinary and singular note of favour." may not the interpretation of the phrase "i sought therein an ease in coming within bars" be "i sought in that motion a freedom from the burden (or necessity) of coming within bars." the phrase "an ease in" is very unusual, and unless it was a term used in connection with the inns it is difficult to see its precise meaning. in other words, he sought an alternative method to provide means for carrying out his great philosophical enterprise. there is an interval of five years before the next and last letter of the six was written. it is undated, but an observation in it shows that it was written when he was about years of age, thus fixing the date at . from an entry in burghley's note book,[ ] dated october, , it appears that in the meantime a grant had been made to bacon of the reversion of the office of clerk to the counsel in the star chamber. this was worth about £ , per annum and executed by deputy, but the reversion did not fall in for twenty years, so it did not affect the immediate difficulty in ways and means. there are occasional references to francis in anthony's correspondence which show that the brothers were residing at grays inn, but nothing is stated as to the occupation of the younger brother. at this time, according to spedding,[ ] who, however, does not give his authority, francis had a lodge at twickenham. many of his letters are subsequently addressed from it, and three years later he was keeping a staff of scriveners there. the last letter is addressed to lord burghley, who is in it described by bacon as "the second founder of my poor estate," and contains the following:-- "i cannot accuse myself that i am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend nor my course to get. lastly, i confess that i have as vast contemplative ends as i have moderate civil ends: for i have taken all knowledge to be my province. this whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or (if one takes it favourably) _philanthropia_, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. and i do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own, which is the thing i greatly affect. and for your lordship, perhaps you shall not find more strength and less encounter in any other. and if your lordship shall find now, or at any time, that i do seek or affect any place, whereunto any that is nearer to your lordship shall be concurrent, say then that i am a most dishonest man. and if your lordship will not carry me on, i will not do as anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto voluntary poverty; but this i will do, i will sell the inheritance that i have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service and become some sorry bookmaker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth, which he said lay so deep. this which i have writ to your lordship is rather thoughts than words, being set down without all art, disguising or reservation." the suit has been of no avail. once more bacon appeals (and this is to be his final appeal) to his uncle. he is writing thoughts rather than words, set down without art, disguising or reservation. but if his lordship will not carry him along he has definitely decided on his course of action. the law is not now even referred to. if the object of the suit was not stated in , there cannot be much doubt now but that it had to do with the making of books and pioneer work in the mine of truth. for ten years francis bacon had waited, buoyed up by encouragements and false hopes. now he decides to take his fortune into his own hands and rely no more on assistance either from the queen or burghley. one sentence in the letter should be noted: "if your lordship shall find now, or at any time, that i do seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your lordship shall be concurrent, say then that i am a most dishonest man." surely this was an assurance on bacon's part that he did not seek or affect to stand in the way of the one--the only one, robert cecil--who stood nearer to burghley in kinship. it therefore appears evident from the foregoing facts:-- ( ) that francis bacon at years of age was an accomplished scholar; that his knowledge was abnormally great, and that his wit, memory, and mental qualities were of the highest order--probably without parallel. ( ) that in the year , when years old, he sought the assistance of burghley to induce the queen to supply him with means and the opportunity to carry out some great work upon the achievement of which he had set his heart. the work was without precedent, and in carrying it out he was prepared to dedicate to her majesty the use and spending of his life. ( ) that for ten years he waited and hoped for the granting of his suit, which was rare and unaccustomed, until eventually he was compelled to relinquish it and rely upon his own resources to effect his object. ( ) but he desired to command other wits than his own, and that could be more easily achieved by one holding place of any reasonable countenance. he therefore sought through burleigh place accompanied by income, so that he might be enabled to achieve the vast contemplative ends he had in view. ( ) that during the years to , in which he claims that he was not slothful, there is no evidence of his being occupied in his profession or in state affairs to any appreciable extent, and yet there do not exist any acknowledged works as the result of his labours. rawley states that bacon would "suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improvement." ( ) he received pecuniary assistance from his uncle, lord burghley. he strained the monetary resources of his mother and brother, which were not inconsiderable, to the utmost, exhausted his own, and heavily encumbered himself with debts, and yet he was not prodigal or extravagant. ( ) money and time he must have to carry out his scheme, which, if one takes it favourably, might be termed philanthropia, and he therefore decided that, failing obtaining some sinecure office, he would sell the inheritance he had, purchase some lease of quick revenue or office of gain that could be executed by a deputy, give over all care of serving the state, and become some sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in the mine of truth. ( ) spedding says, "he could at once imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works"; but whatever his contemplative ends were there is nothing known to his biographers which reveals the result of his labours as clerk of the works. ( ) if he carried out the course of action which he contemplated it is clear that he decided to do so without himself appearing as its author and director. from to something more was on his mind than the works he published after he had arrived at sixty years of age. "i am no vain promiser," he said. where can the fulfilment of his promise be found? can his course be followed by tracing through the period the trail which was left by some great and powerful mind directing the progress of the english renaissance? footnotes: [ ] spedding prints this in small type, being doubtful as to the authorship. [ ] that is, never held a brief. [ ] i am indebted to mr. harold hardy for this interesting information. there is an entry in the state papers, , jan. : grant at the suit of sir francis bacon to sir william cooke, sir john constable, and three others, of the king's reversion of the estates in herts above referred to. sir nicholas, to whom it had descended from the lord keeper, conveyed the remainder to queen elizabeth her heirs and successors "with the condition that if he paid £ the grant should be void, which was apparently done to prevent the said sir francis to dispose of the same land which otherwise by law he might have done." when lady anne conveyed the markes estate to francis it was subject to a similar condition, namely, that the grant was to be null and void on lady ann paying ten shillings to francis. this condition made it impossible for francis to dispose of his interest in the estate, hence anthony's request in the letter above referred to. it is obvious that his relatives considered that francis was not to be trusted with property which he could turn into money. there was evidently some heavy strain on his resources which caused him to convert everything he could into cash. [ ] "story of lord bacon's life." hepworth dixon, p. . [ ] the two letters of th september, , and that of th october, , are taken from copies in the lansdowne collection. that of the th may, , is in the same collection, and is an original in bacon's handwriting. the letter of th august, , is also in his handwriting, and is in the state papers, domestic. the letter without date, written to burghley presumably in , is from the supplement to the "resuscitatio," . [ ] "life and letters," vol. i. p. . [ ] this was sir christopher hatton. [ ] "life and letters," vol i. p. . [ ] cott. mss. tit. cx. . [ ] "life and letters," vol. i., p. . chapter x. the rare and unaccustomed suit. what was this rare and unaccustomed suit of which the queen could have had no experience and which, according to spedding, would make it unnecessary for bacon to follow "ordinary practice at the bar"? historians and biographers have founded on this suit the allegation that from his earliest years bacon was a place hunter, entirely ignoring the fact, which is made clear from the letter to walsingham written four years after the application was first made, that he had resolved on a course of action which, if her majesty liked not his suit, by the leave of god he must and would follow, not for any necessity of estate, but for his credit sake. here was a young man of twenty years of age, earnestly urging the adoption of a scheme which he had conceived, and which he feared burghley might consider indiscreet and unadvised. failing in obtaining his object, as will be proved by definite evidence, undertaking at the cost of thomas bodley and other friends a course of travel to better fit him for the task he had mapped out as his life's work--returning to england and, four years after his first request had been made, renewing his suit--grimly in earnest and determined to carry the scheme through at all costs, with or without the queen's aid. this is not the conduct of a mere place hunter. if these letters be read aright and the reasonable theory which will be advanced of the nature of the suit be accepted--all efforts to suggest any explanation having hitherto, as spedding admits, proved futile--a fresh light will be thrown upon the character of francis bacon, and the heavy obligation under which he has placed his countrymen for all ages will for the first time be recognised. in the seven volumes of "bacon's life and letters" there is nothing to justify the eulogy on his character to which spedding gave utterance in the following words:--"but in him the gift of seeing in prophetic vision what might be and ought to be was united with the practical talent of devising means and handling minute details. he could at once imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works. upon the conviction _this must be done_ followed at once _how_ may it be done? upon that question answered followed the resolution to try and do it." but although spedding fails to produce any evidence to justify his statement, it is nevertheless correct. more than that, the actual achievement followed with unerring certainty, but spedding restricts bacon's life's work to the establishment of a system of inductive philosophy, and records the failure of the system. william cecil was a man of considerable classical attainments, although these were probably not superior to those of mildred cooke, the lady who became his second wife. he was initiated into the methods of statesmanship at an early age by his father, richard cecil, master of the robes to henry viii. having found favour with somerset, the protector of edward vi., he was, when years of age, made master of requests. when somerset fell from power in young cecil, with other adherents of the protector, was committed to the tower. but he was soon released and was rapidly advanced by northumberland. he became secretary of state, was knighted and made a member of the privy council. mary would have continued his employment in office had he not refused her offers on account of his adhesion to the protestant faith. he mingled during her reign with men of all parties and his moderation and cautious conduct carried him through that period without mishap. on elizabeth's accession he was the first member sworn upon the privy council, and he continued during the remainder of his life her principal minister of state. sagacious, deliberate in thought and character, tolerant, a man of peace and compromise, he became the mainstay of the queen's government and the most influential man in state affairs. whilst he maintained a princely magnificence in his affairs, his private life was pure, gentle and generous. this was the man to whom the brilliant young nephew of his wife and the son of his old friend, sir nicholas bacon, disclosed, some time during the summer of , his scheme, of which there had been no experience, and entrusted his suit, which was rare and unaccustomed. the arguments in its favour at this interview may have followed the following outline:-- i need not remind you of my devotion to learning. you know that from my earliest boyhood i have followed a course of study which has embraced all subjects. i have made myself acquainted with all knowledge which the world possesses. to enable me to do this i mastered all languages in which books are written. during my recent visit to foreign lands, i have recognized how far my country falls behind others in language, and consequently in literature. i would draw your special attention to the remarkable advance which has been made in these matters in france during your lordship's lifetime. when i arrived there in i made myself acquainted with the principles of the movement which had been carried through by du bellay, ronsard, and their confrères. they recognized that their native language was crude and lacking in gravity and art. first by obtaining a complete mastery of the greek and latin languages, as also of those of italy and spain, they prepared themselves for a study of the literatures of which those languages, with their idioms and peculiarities, form the basis. having obtained this mastery they reconstructed their native language and gave their country a medium by which her writers might express their thoughts and emotions. they have made it possible for their countrymen to rival the poets of ancient greece and rome. they and others of their countrymen have translated the literary treasures of those ancient nations into their own tongue, and thereby enabled those speaking their language, who are not skilled in classical languages, to enjoy and profit by the works of antiquity. your lordship knows well the deficiencies of the language of our england, the absence of any literature worthy of the name. in these respects the condition of affairs is far behind that which prevailed in france even before the great movement which ronsard and du bellay initiated. i do not speak of italy, which possesses a language melodious, facile, and rich, and a literature which can never die. i know my own powers. i possess every qualification which will enable me to do for my native tongue what the pléiade have done for theirs. i ask to be permitted to give to my country this great heritage. others may serve her in the law, others may serve her in affairs of state, but your lordship knows full well that there are none who could serve her in this respect as could i. you are not unmindful of the poorness of my estate. this work will not only entail a large outlay of money but it necessitates command of the ablest wits of the nation. this is my suit: that her majesty will graciously confer on me some office which will enable me to control such literary resources and the services of such men as may be necessary for the accomplishment of this work; further, that she may be pleased from time to time to make grants from the civil list to cover the cost of the work. i need not remind your lordship what fame will ever attach to her majesty and how glorious will be the memory of her reign if this great project be effected in it. your lordship must realise this because you and her ladyship, my aunt, are by your attainments qualified to appreciate its full value. my youth may be urged as an objection to my fitness for such a task, but your lordship knows full well--none better--that my powers are not to be measured by my years. this i will say, i am no vain promiser, but i am assured that i can accomplish all that i contemplate. the queen hath such confidence in the soundness of your judgment that she will listen to your advice. my prayer to you therefore is that it may please your lordship both herein and elsewhere to be my patron and urge my suit, which, although rare and unaccustomed, may be granted if it receives your powerful support. the suit was submitted to the queen, but without result. probably it was not urged with a determination to obtain its acceptance in spite of any objections which might be raised by the queen. five years after, bacon, still a suppliant, wrote to walsingham: "i think the objection to my years will wear away with the length of my suit." cautious lord burghley would give full weight to the force of this objection if it were advanced by the queen. he loved this boy, with his extraordinary abilities, but he had such novel and far-reaching ideas. he appeared to have no adequate reverence for his inferior superiors. on leaving cambridge he had arrogantly condemned its cherished methods of imparting knowledge. before power was placed in his hands the use he might make of it must be well weighed and considered. what effect might the advancement of francis bacon have on robert cecil's career? granted that the contentions of the former were sound, and the object desirable, should not this work be carried out by the universities? never leap until you know where you are going to alight was a proverb the soundness of which had been proved in lord burghley's experience. what might be the outcome if this rare and unaccustomed suit were granted? better for the queen, who, though slow to bestow favours, was always ready to encourage hopes, to follow her usual course. she might entertain the motion graciously and return a favourable answer and let it rest there. and so it did. then there was a happening which has remained unknown until now. chapter xi. bacon's second visit to the continent and after. in the "reliquiæ bodleianæ," published in , is a letter written without date by thomas bodley to francis bacon. this letter does not appear to have been known to mallett, montague, dixon, spedding, or any of bacon's biographers. it had been lost sight of until the writer noticed it and reproduced it in _baconiana_. this is the letter:-- my dear cousin,--according to your request in your letter (dated the th october at orleans, i received here the th of december), i have sent you by your merchant £ (the thirty is written thus l) sterling for your present supply, and had sent you a greater sum, but that my extraordinary charge this year _hath utterly unfurnished me_. and now, cousin, though i will be no _severe_ exactor of the account, either of your money or time, yet for the love i bear you, i am very desirous, both to satisfy myself, and your friends how you prosper in your travels, and how you find yourself bettered thereby, either in knowledge of god, or of the world; the rather, because the days you have already spent abroad, are now both sufficient to give you light, how to fix yourself and end with counsel, and accordingly to shape your course constantly unto it. besides, it is a vulgar scandal unto the travellers, that few return more religious (narrow, _editor_) than they went forth; wherein both my hope and request is to you, that your principal care be to hold your foundation, and to make no other use of informing your self in the corruptions and superstitions of other nations, than only thereby to engage your own heart more firmly to the truth. you live indeed in a country of two several professions, and you shall return a novice, if you be not able to give an account of the ordinances, strength, and progress of each, in reputation, and party, and how both are supported, ballanced and managed by the state, as being the contrary humours, in the temper of predominancy whereof, the health or disease of that body doth consist. these things you will observe, not only as an _english_-man, whom it may concern, to what interest his country may expect in the consciences of their neighbours; but also, as a christian, to consider both the beauties and blemishes, the hopes and dangers of the _church_ in all places. now for the world, i know it _too_ well, to persuade you to dive into the practices thereof; rather stand upon your own guard, against all that attempt you there unto, or may practise upon you in your conscience, reputation, or your purse. resolve, no man is wise or safe, but he that is honest: and let this persuasion turn your studies and observations from the complement and impostures of the debased age, to more real grounds of wisdom, gathered out of the story of times past, and out of the government of the present state. your guide to this, is the knowledge of the country and the people among whom ye live; for the country though you cannot see all places, yet if, as you pass along, you enquire carefully, and further help yourself with books that are written of the cosmography of those parts, you shall sufficiently gather the strength, riches, traffick, havens, shipping, _commodities_, vent, and the wants and disadvantages of places. wherein also, for your good hereafter, and for your friends, it will befit to note their buildings, furnitures, entertainments; all their husbandry, and ingenious inventions, in whatsoever concerneth either pleasure or profit. for the people, your traffick among them, while you learn their language, will sufficiently instruct you in their habilities, dispositions, and humours, if you a little enlarge the privacy of your own nature, to seek acquaintance with the best sort of strangers, and _restrain_ your _affections_ and participation, for your own countrymen of whatsoever condition. in the story of france, you have a _large and pleasant field_ in three lines of their kings, to observe their alliances and successions, their _conquests_, their wars, _especially with us_; their councils, their treaties; and all rules and examples of experiences and wisdom, which may be lights and remembrances to you hereafter, to judge of all occurants both at home and abroad. lastly, for the government, your end _must not be like an_ intelligencer, to spend all your time in fishing after the present news, humours, graces, _or_ disgraces of court, which happily may change before you come home; but your better and more constant ground will be, to know the consanguinities, alliances, and estates of their princes; proportion between the nobility and magistracy; the constitutions of their courts of justice; the state of the laws, as well for the making as the execution thereof; how the sovereignty of the king infuseth itself into all acts and ordinances; how many ways they lay impositions and taxations, and gather revenues to the _crown_. what be the liberties and servitudes of all degrees; what discipline and preparations for wars; what invention for increase of traffick at home, for multiplying their commodities, encouraging arts and manufactures, or of worth in any kind. also what establishment, to prevent the _necessities_ and _discontentment_ of _people_, to cut off suits at law, and duels, to suppress thieves and all disorders. to be short, because my purpose is not to bring all your observations to heads, but only by these few to let you know what manner of return your friends expect _from you_; let me, for all these and all the rest, give you this one note, which i desire you to observe as the counsels of a friend, _not_ to spend your spirits, and the _precious_ time of your travel, in a captious prejudice and censuring of all things, nor in an infectious collection of base vices and fashions of men and women, or general corruption of these times, which will be of use only among humorists, for jests and table-talk: but rather strain your wits and industry soundly to instruct your-self in all things between _heaven and earth_ which may tend to virtue, wisdom, and honour, and which may make your life more profitable to your country, and yourself more comfortable to your friends, and acceptable to god. and to conclude, let all these riches be treasured up, not only in your memory, where time may lessen your stock; but rather in good writings, and books of account, which will _keept_ them safe for your use hereafter. and if in this time of your liberal traffick, you will give me any advertizement of your commodities in these kinds, i will make you as liberal a return from my self and your friends here, as i shall be able. and so commending all your good endeavours, to him that must either _wither_ or _prosper_ them, i very kindly bid you farewel. your's to be commanded, thomas bodley. spedding prints this letter (vol. ii. p. ) commencing with the words, "yet for the love i bear," to the end, with the exception of the last sentence, as a letter written probably by bacon for essex to send to the earl of rutland. he identifies it as "the letter which the compiler of stephens' catalogue took for a letter addressed by bacon to buckingham," which he says it could not be. the original is at lambeth (mss. , fo. ). the seal remains, but the part of the last sheet which contained the signature on one side, and the superscription on the other, has been torn off. the letter commences, "_my good lord_," and ends, "_your lordship's in all duty to serve you_." it would appear, therefore, that someone had access to bodley's letter to bacon, and, approving its contents, used its contents a second time. there are two palpable deductions to be drawn from this letter: ( ) that bacon was on a journey through _several_ countries to obtain knowledge of their customs, laws, religion, military strength, shipping, and whatsoever concerneth pleasure or profit. there is a striking correspondence between bodley's advice and the description of bacon's travels found in the "life" prefixed to "l'histoire naturelle." ( ) that bacon was being supported by bodley and other of his friends, who desired him to keep a record of all that he observed and learnt, and to report from time to time as he progressed, and in return, said bodley, "i will make you as liberal a return from myself and your friends here as i shall be able." this letter was written from england, and there is a paragraph in bodley's "life," written by himself, which makes it possible to fix the year:-- "my resolution fully taken i departed out of england anno and continued very neare foure yeares abroad, and that in sundry parts of italy, france, and germany. a good while after my return to wit, in the yeare i was employed by the queen," etc. if this letter was written between and it would appear strange that bodley and others should be providing bacon with money for his travels, and requiring reports from him, whilst his father, sir nicholas bacon, was alive and prosperous. no such difficulty, however, arises, for the letter, being sent from england, could not have been written between the date of bacon's first departure for france in and his return on his father's death in , for during the whole of that time bodley was abroad. it is stated in it that bacon wrote from orleans a letter dated th october, the year not being given. this could not be in , for bacon wrote to lord burghley from gray's inn on the th october, . spedding commences the paragraph immediately following this letter by saying, "from this time we have no further news of francis bacon till the th of april, ," and although he does not reproduce the letter, he relies on a letter from faunt to anthony bacon, to which that date is attributed in birch's " memorials," vol. i. page . in it faunt refers to having seen anthony's mother and his brother francis. faunt left paris for england on the nd march, . this letter was written on the th of the following month, so no trace has been found of francis being in england between th october, , and th of april, . bodley's letter, must, therefore, have been written in december, , when bacon was abroad making a journey through several countries. from the foregoing facts it is impossible to form any other conclusion. now for the first time this journey has been made known. there is a letter amongst the state papers in the record office, dated february, , written by anthony bacon to lord burghley, enclosing a note of advice and instructions for his brother francis. anthony was an experienced traveller, and was then abroad. it reads as though he was sending advice and instructions to his younger brother, who was about to start on travels through countries with which anthony was familiar. if so, francis would leave england early in march, --that is, if he had not left before this letter was received by burghley. having established beyond reasonable doubt the fact of this journey, a new and remarkable suggestion presents itself. spedding, when dealing with the year , prints "notes on the state of christendom,"[ ] with the following remarks:-- "if that paper of notes concerning 'the state of europe' which was printed as bacon's in the supplement to stephens' second collection in , reprinted by mallet in , and has been placed at the beginning of his political writings in all editions since , be really of his composition, this is the period of his life to which it belongs. i must confess, however, that i am not satisfied with the evidence or authority upon which it appears to have been ascribed to him." robert stephens, who was historiographer royal in the reign of william and mary, states that the earl of oxford placed in his hands some neglected manuscripts and loose papers to see whether any of the lord bacon's compositions lay concealed there and were fit for publication. he found some of them written, and others amended, with his lordship's own hand. he found certain of the treatises had been published by him, and that others, certainly genuine, which had not, were fit to be transcribed if not divulged. spedding states that he has little doubt that this paper on the state of europe was among these manuscripts and loose papers, for the editor states that the supplementary pieces (of which this was one) were added from originals found among stephens' papers. the original is now among the harleian mss. in the british museum. spedding thus describes it:-- "the harleian ms. is a copy in an old hand, probably contemporary, but not francis bacon's. a few sentences have been inserted afterwards by the same hand, and two by another which is very like anthony bacon's; none in francis's. the blanks have all been filled up, but no words have been corrected, though it is obvious that in some places they stand in need of correction. "certain allusions to events then passing (which will be pointed out in their place) prove that the original paper was written, or at least completed, in the summer of , at which time francis bacon was studying law in gray's inn, while anthony was travelling in france in search of political intelligence and was in close correspondence with nicholas faunt, a secretary of sir francis walsingham's, who had spent the previous year in france, germany, switzerland, and the north of italy, on the same errand; and was now living about the english court, studying affairs at home, and collecting and arranging the observations which he had made abroad, 'having already recovered all his writings and books which he had left behind him in italy and in frankfort' (see birch's 'memoirs,' i. ), and it is remembered that if this paper belonged to anthony bacon, it would naturally descend at his death to francis and so remain among his manuscripts, where it is supposed to have been found. "thus it appears that the external evidence justifies no inference as to the authorship, and the only question is whether the _style_ can be considered conclusive. to me it certainly is not. but as this is a point upon which the reader should be allowed to judge for himself, and as the paper is interesting in itself and historically valuable and has always passed for bacon's, it is here printed from the original though (to distinguish it from his undoubted compositions) in a smaller type." spedding's difficulty in accepting this paper as from bacon's pen really lay in the fact that from the internal evidence it is obvious that it was written by one who had himself travelled through, at any rate, some of the countries described. the results of personal observation are again and again apparent. according to spedding, bacon was in - studying law at gray's inn; according to bodley he was on the continent making observations for his future guidance. the reader can judge of the value of the external evidence. it is not conclusive, but the draft being found amongst papers which were unquestionably bacon's writings and being adopted as bacon's and published as such by those who found it, the balance of probabilities is distinctly in favour of its being his. as to the internal evidence much may be said. it corresponds as closely as it is possible with bodley's requirements as set forth in his letter of december. it is exactly "the manner of return" bodley wrote to francis "your friends expect from you." "and," he added, "if in this time of your liberal traffick, you will give me any advertisement of your commodities in these kinds, i will make you as liberal a return from myself and your friends here as i shall be able." the date agrees with that of bacon's second visit to the continent. in spedding's life and letters it occupies twelve and a-half pages, of which five are occupied by descriptions of italy, one of austria, two of germany (chiefly a recital of names and places), two of france, three-quarters of spain, one and three-quarters of portugal, poland, denmark, and sweden. this may have been bacon's itinerary in - . italy is treated with considerable detail and was undoubtedly described from personal observation, as were france and spain. in a less degree the description of austria, poland and denmark produces this impression; in a still smaller degree portugal and sweden, and it is quite absent from the description of germany. florence, venice, mantua, genoa, savoy, are dealt with in most detail. rawley states that it was bacon's intention to have stayed abroad some years longer when he was called home by the death of his father, to find himself left in straightened circumstances. then followed his ineffectual suit, which he still persisted in. bodley evidently was, if not the instigator, at any rate the paymaster for this second journey. anthony's letter of february, , points to burghley as a participator in the project. he would assist not only out of kindly feeling, but the journey would at any rate get this ambitious, determined young man out of the way for a time, and possibly the journey might get this unaccustomed suit out of his mind. thus it came about. from faunt's letters, spedding says we derive what little information we have with regard to francis's proceedings from to . "from them we gather little more than that he remained studying at gray's inn, occasionally visiting his mother at gorhambury, or going with her to hear travers at the temple and occasionally appearing at the court." but the suit was not abandoned, for there is the letter of th august, , to walsingham, when bacon writes: "i think the objection of my years will wear away with the length of my suit. the very stay doth in this respect concern me, because i am thereby hindered to take a course of practice which by the leave of god, if her majesty like not of my suit, i must and will follow: not for any necessity of estate, but for my credit sake, which i know by living out of action will wear." again, the old, "rare and unaccustomed suit" of which the queen could have had no experience! either the persuasive powers of burghley had failed or he had not exerted them. probably the latter, because the troublesome, determined young man is now worrying walsingham and hatton to urge its acceptance with the queen. the purport of the foregoing extract effectually precludes the possibility of this suit referring to his advancement at the bar. for five years it has been proceeding--he has been indulging in hopes which have been unfulfilled. now he will wait no longer, but he will adopt a course which, if her majesty like not his suit, by the leave of god he must and will follow, not for any necessity of making money but because he feels impelled to it by a sense of responsibility which he must fulfil. walsingham and hatton do not appear to have helped the matter forward. there was little probability of them succeeding in influencing the queen where burghley had failed. there was still less probability of them attempting to influence her if burghley objected. had this suit referred to advancement in the law it would have been granted with the aid of burghley's influence years before. had it referred to some ordinary office of state, friends so powerful as burghley, walsingham and hatton could and would have obtained anything within reason for this brilliant young son of sir nicholas bacon, for there was no complication with essex until after . but this rare and unaccustomed suit of which there had been no experience was another matter. six more years pass, and although there is now no suit to the queen there is the same idea prevailing in the letter to burghley--a seeking for help to achieve some great scheme upon which bacon's mind was so fixed "as it cannot be removed," "whether it be curiosity, vainglory or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropia." still he required the command of more wits than of a man's own, which is the thing he did greatly affect. still his course was not to get. still the determination to achieve the object without help, if help could not be obtained--to achieve it by becoming some sorry bookmaker or a pioneer in that mine of truth which anaxagoras said lay so deep. this is emphasised. these are "thoughts rather than words, being set down without all art, disguising or reservation." there are two significant sentences in this letter written to burghley when bacon was years of age. he describes burghley as "the second founder of my poor estate," and, further, he uses the expression "and if your lordship will not carry me on." what can these allusions mean but that burghley had been rendering financial assistance to his nephew? if the theory here put forward as to the nature of the suit be correct, the object was one which would have burghley's cordial support. that he had expressed approval of it must be deduced from the letter of the th of september, . the object was one which, without doubt, would find still warmer support from lady mildred. but the suit was so unprecedented that it is not to be wondered at that burghley did not try to force it through. the work was going forward all the time--slowly for lack of means and official recognition. burghley, generous in his nature, lavish in private life, might, however, be expected to help a work which he would be glad to see carried to a successful conclusion. had he been less cautious and let young francis have his head, what might not have happened! but there was always the fear of letting this huge intellectual power forge ahead without restraint. it was, however, working out unseen its scheme and that, too, with burghley's help and that of others. the period from to --only years--sees the english language developed from a state of almost barbaric crudeness to the highest pitch which any language, classical or modern, has reached. there was but one workman living at that period who could have constructed that wonderful instrument and used it to produce such magnificent examples of its possibilities. it is as reasonable to take up a watch keeping perfect time and aver that the parts came together by accident, as to contend that the english language of the authorised version of the bible and the works of shakespeare were the result of a general up-springing of literary taste which was diffused amongst a few writers of very mediocre ability. the english renaissance was conceived in france and born in england in . it ran its course and in attained its maturity; but when francis bacon was no more--he who had performed that in our tongue which may be preferred either to insolent greece or haughty rome--"things daily fall, wits grow downward, and eloquence grows backward: so that he may be named and stand as the mark and [greek: achmê] of our language." footnotes: [ ] "life and letters," vol. i., page . chapter xii. is it probable that bacon left manuscripts hidden away? it is difficult to leave this subject without some reference to the articles which have appeared in the press and magazines referring to the suggestion that there were left concealed literary remains of bacon hitherto undiscovered. in an article which recently appeared in a shakespearean journal, a writer who evidently knows little about the elizabethan period said: "but why should bacon want to bury manuscripts, anyhow? who does bury manuscripts? besides, they had been printed and were, therefore, rubbish and waste paper merely." the manuscript of john harrington's translation of ariosto's "orlando furioso" may be seen in the british museum. it is beautifully written on quarto paper. it was, apparently, the fair copy sent to the printer from which the type was to be set up. be this as it may, it was undoubtedly a copy upon which bacon marked off the verses which are to go on each page and set out the folio of each page and the printer's signature which was to appear at the bottom. it also contains instructions to the printer as to the type to be used. this manuscript was not considered "rubbish and waste paper merely." francis bacon has again and again insisted upon the value of history. in the "advancement of learning" he points out to the king "the indignity and unworthiness of the history of england as it now is, in the main continuation thereof." no man appreciated as did bacon the importance in the history of england of the epoch in which he lived. that a truthful relation of the events of those times would be invaluable to posterity he knew full well. he of all men living at that time was best qualified to write such a history. he recognised that there were objections to a history being written, or, at any rate, published, wherein the actions of persons living were described, for he said "it must be confessed that such kind of relations, specially if they be published about the times of things done, seeing very often that they are written with passion or partiality, of all other narrations, are most suspected." it is hardly conceivable that bacon should have failed to provide a faithful history of his own times for the benefit of posterity, or, at any rate, that he should have failed to preserve the materials for such a history. neither the history nor such materials are known to be in existence. supposing bacon had prepared either the one or the other, what could he do with it? hand it to rawley with instructions for it to be printed? with a strong probability, if it were a faithful history, that it would never be published, but that it would be destroyed, he would never take such a risk. there would only be one course open to him. to conceal it in some place where it would not be likely to be disturbed, in which it might remain in safety, possibly for hundreds of years. and then leave a clue either in cypher or otherwise by which it might be recovered. it is by no means outside the range of possibility that bacon as early as had opened a receptacle for books and manuscripts which he desired should go down to posterity, and fearing their loss from any cause, he carefully concealed them, adding to the store from time to time. if he did so he left a problem to be solved, and arranged the place of concealment so that it could only be found by a solution of the problem. the emblems on two title-pages of two books of the period are very significant. "truth brought to light and discovered by time" is a narrative history of the first fourteen years of king james' reign. one portion of the engraved title-page represents a spreading tree growing up out of a coffin, full fraught with various fruits (manuscripts and books) most fresh and fair to make succeeding times most rich and rare. in the emblem (fig. iii.) now reproduced, which is found on the title-page of the first edition of "new atlantis," ,[ ] truth personified by a naked woman is being revealed by father time, and the inscription round the device is "_tempore patet occulta veritas_--in time the hidden truth shall be revealed." then, in further confirmation of this view, there is the statement of rawley in his introduction to the "manes verulamiani." speaking of the fame of his illustrious master he says, "be this moreover enough, to have laid, as it were, the foundations, in the name of the present age. every age will, methinks, adorn and amplify this structure, but to what age it may be vouchsafed to set the finishing hand--this is known only to god and the fates." [illustration: _fig. iii._ _from the title page of "new atlantis," ._] [illustration: _fig. iv._ _from the title page of peacham's "minerva britannia," ._] footnotes: [ ] there is a copy bearing date . chapter xiii. how the elizabethan literature was produced. the half century from to stands by itself in the history of the literature of this country. during that period not only was the english language made, not only were there produced the finest examples of its capacities, which to-day exist, but the knowledge and wisdom possessed by the classical writers, the histories of the principal nations of the world, practically everything that was worth knowing in the literature which existed in other countries were, for the first time, made available in the english tongue. and what is still more remarkable, these translations were printed and published. these works embraced every art and subject which can be imagined. further, during this period there were issued a large number of books crowded with information upon general subjects. the names on the title-pages of many of these works are unknown. it is astonishing how many men as to whom nothing can be learnt, appear about this time to have written one book and one book only. these translations were published at a considerable cost. for such works, being printed in the english language, purchasers were practically confined to this country, and their number was very limited. the quantity of copies constituting an edition must have been small. it is impossible to believe that the sale of these books could realise the amount of their cost. definite information on this point is difficult to obtain, for little is known as to the prices at which these books were sold. it appears from the "transcripts of the stationers' registers" that the maximum number of copies that went to make up an edition was in the interest of the workman fixed at , copies, so that if a larger number were required the type had to be re-set for each additional , copies. double impressions of , were allowed of primers, catechisms, proclamations, statutes and almanacs. but the solid literature which came into the language at this period would not be required in such quantities. the printer was not usually the vendor of the books. the publisher and bookseller or stationer carried on in most cases a distinct business. pamphlets, sermons, plays, books of poems, formed the staple ware of the stationer. the style of the book out of which the stationer made his money may be gathered from the following extract from _the return from parnassus_, act i, scene :-- _ingenioso._--danter thou art deceived, wit is dearer than thou takest it to bee. i tell thee this libel of cambridge has much salt and pepper in the nose: it will sell sheerely underhand when all those bookes of exhortations and catechisms lie moulding on thy shopboard. _danter._--it's true, but good fayth, m. ingenioso, i lost by your last booke; and you know there is many a one that pays me largely for the printing of their inventions, but for all this you shall have shillings and an odde pottle of wine. _ingenioso._-- shillings? a fit reward for one of your reumatick poets, that beslavers all the paper he comes by, and furnishes the chaundlers with wast papers to wrap candles in: ... it's the gallantest child my invention was ever delivered off. the title is, a chronicle of cambridge cuckolds; here a man may see, what day of the moneth such a man's commons were inclosed, and when throwne open, and when any entayled some odde crownes upon the heires of their bodies unlawfully begotten; speake quickly, ells i am gone. _danter._--oh this will sell gallantly. ile have it whatsoever it cost, will you walk on, m. ingenioso, weele sit over a cup of wine and agree on it. the publication of such works as hollingshed's "chronicles," north's "plutarch's lives," grimston's "history of france," and "the french academy," could not have been produced with profit as the object. a large body of evidence may be brought forward to support this view, but space will only permit two examples to be here set forth. in the dedication to sir william cecil, of hollingshed's "chronicles," , the writer says: yet when the volume grew so great as they that were to defraie the charges for the impression were not willing to go through with the whole, they resolved first to publish the histories of england, scotland, and ireland with their descriptions. john dee spent most of the year in writing a series of volumes to be entitled "general and rare memorials pertayning to the perfect art of navigation." in the first volume was ready for the press. in june he had to borrow £ from one friend, £ from another, and £ upon "the chayn of gold." in the following august john day commenced printing it at his press in aldersgate. the title was "the british monarchy or hexameron brytannicum," and the edition consisted of copies. the second volume, "the british complement," was ready in the following december. it was never published. dee states in his diary that the printing would cost many hundreds of pounds, as it contained tables and figures, and he must first have "a comfortable and sufficient opportunity or supply thereto." this he was unable to procure, so the book remained in manuscript.[ ] books of this class were never produced with the object of making profit. the proceeds of sale would not cover the cost of printing and publishing, without any provision for the remuneration of the translator or author. why were they published, and how was the cost provided? there was, however, another source of revenue open to the author of a book. henry peacham, in "the truth of our time," says:-- "but then you may say, the dedication will bee worth a great matter, either in present reward of money, or preferment by your patrones letter, or other means. and for this purpose you prefixe a learned and as panegyricall epistle as can," etc. it is beyond question that an author usually obtained a considerable contribution towards the cost of the production of a book from the person to whom the dedication was addressed. a number of books published during the period from to are dedicated to the queen, to the earl of leicester, and to lord burghley. one can only offer a suggestion on this point which may or may not be correct. if francis bacon was concerned in the issue of these translations and other works, and burghley was assisting him financially, it is probable that burghley would procure grants from the queen in respect of books which were dedicated to her, and would provide funds towards the cost of such books as were dedicated to himself. "the arte of english poesie" was written with the intention that it should be dedicated to the queen, but there was a change in the plans, and burghley's name was substituted. when bacon, in , is threatening to become "a sorry bookmaker," he describes burghley as the second founder of his poor estate, and uses the expression, "if your lordship will not carry me on," which can only mean that as to the matter which is the subject of the letter, burghley had not merely been assisting but carrying him. the evidence which exists is strong enough to warrant putting forward this theory as to the frequency of the names of the queen and burghley on the dedications. the earl of leicester desired to have the reputation of being a patron of the arts, and was willing to pay for advertisement. he was the chancellor of oxford university, and evidently recognised the value of printing, for in he erected, at his own expense, a new printing press for the use of the university. if he paid at all for dedications he would pay liberally. but, of course, the queen, burghley, and leicester were accessible to others besides bacon, and the argument goes no further than that towards the production of certain books upon which their names appear the patrons provided part of the cost. the recognition of this fact, however, does not detract from the importance of the expressions used by bacon in his letter to burghley. there is abundant testimony to the fact that it was the custom, during the elizabethan age, for an author to suppress his own name, and on the title-page[ ] substitute either the initials or name of some other person. the title-pages of this period are as unreliable as are the names or initials affixed to the dedications and epistles "to the reader." in was published "the historie of the life and death of mary stuart queene of scotland." the dedication is signed wil stranguage. in it was reprinted, the same dedication being signed w. vdall. there are numerous similar instances. footnotes: [ ] "john dee," by charlotte fell smith, . constable and co., ltd. [ ] see page . chapter xiv. the clue to the mystery of bacon's life. the theory now put forward is based upon the assumption that francis bacon at a very early age adopted the conception that he would devote his life to the construction of an adequate language and literature for his country and that he would do this remaining invisible. if he was the author of "the anatomie of the mind," , and of "beautiful blossoms," , he must have adopted this plan of obscurity as early as his sixteenth year. it is possible, however, that it may be shown that at a date still earlier he had decided upon this course. this, however, is beyond doubt--that if francis bacon was associated in any way with the literature of england from to , with the exception of the small volume of essays published in , he most carefully concealed his connection with it. "therefore, set it down," he says in the essay of simulation and dissimulation, "that a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral," and in _examples of the antitheta_,[ ] "dissimulation is a compendious wisdome." here again is the same idea: "beside in all wise humane government, they that sit at the helme, doe more happily bring their purposes about, and insinuate more easily things fit for the people by pretexts, and oblique courses; than by ... downright dealing. nay (which perchance may seem very strange) in things meerely naturall, you may sooner deceive nature than force her; so improper and selfeimpeaching are open direct proceedings; whereas on the other side, an oblique and an insinuating way, gently glides along, and compasseth the intended effect."[ ] it is noteworthy that bacon had a quaint conceit of the divine being which he was never tired of repeating. in the preface to the "advancement of learning" ( ), the following passage occurs:-- "_for of the knowledges which contemplate the works of nature, the holy philosopher hath said expressly_; that the glory of god is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out: _as if the divine nature, according to the innocent and sweet play of children, which hide themselves to the end they may be found; took delight to hide his works, to the end they might be found out; and of his indulgence and goodness to mankind, had chosen the soule of man to be his play-fellow in this game_." again on page of the work itself he says:-- "for so he (king solomon) saith expressly, _the glory of god is to conceale a thing, but the glory of a king is to find it out_. as if according to that innocent and affectionate play of children, the divine majesty took delight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out, and as if _kings_ could not obtain a greater honour, then to be god's play-fellowes in that game, especially considering the great command they have of wits and means, whereby the investigation of all things may be perfected." another phase of the same idea is to be found on page . in the author's preface to the "novum organum" the following passage occurs:-- "whereas of the sciences which regard nature the holy philosopher declares that 'it is the glory of god to conceal a thing, but it is the glory of the king to find it out.' even as though the divine nature took pleasure in the innocent and kindly sport of children playing at hide and seek, and vouched-safe of his kindness and goodness to admit the human spirit for his play fellow in that game." in almost identical words bacon suggests the same conception in "in valerius terminus" and in "filum labyrinthi." in the epistle dedicatorie of "the french academie" and elsewhere the author is insisting on the same idea that "he (god) cannot be seene of any mortal creature but is notwithstanding known by his works." the close connection of francis bacon with the works (now seldom studied) of the emblem writers is vouched for by j. baudoin. oliver lector in "letters from the dead to the dead" has given examples of his association with the dutch and french emblem writers. three englishmen appear to have indulged in this fascinating pursuit--george whitney ( ), henry peacham ( ), and george withers ( ). from the baconian point of view peacham's "minerva britannia" is by far the most interesting. the emblem on page is addressed "to the most judicious and learned, sir francis bacon knight." on the opposite leaf, paged thus, · ,[ ] the design represents a hand holding a spear as in the act of shaking it. but it is the frontispiece which bears specially on the present contention. the design is now reproduced (fig. iv). a curtain is drawn to hide a figure, the hand only of which is protruding. it has just written the words "mente videbor"--"by the mind i shall be seen." around the scroll are the words "vivitur ingenio cetera mortis erunt"--one lives in one's genius, other things shall be (or pass away) in death. that emblem represents the secret of francis bacon's life. at a very early age, probably before he was twelve, he had conceived the idea that he would imitate god, that he would hide his works in order that they might be found out--that he would be seen only by his mind and that his image should be concealed. there was no haphazard work about it. it was not simply that having written poems or plays, and desiring not to be known as the author on publishing them, he put someone else's name on the title-page. there was first the conception of the idea, and then the carefully-elaborated scheme for carrying it out. there are numerous allusions in elizabethan and early jacobean literature to someone who was active in literary matters but preferred to remain unrecognised. amongst these there are some which directly refer to francis bacon, others which occur in books or under circumstances which suggest association with him. it is not contended that they amount to direct testimony, but the cumulative force of this evidence must not be ignored. in some of the emblem books of the period these allusions are frequent. then there is john owen's epigram appearing in his "epigrammatum," published in . ad. d.b. "si bene qui latuit, bene vixit, tu bene vivis: ingeniumque tuum grande latendo patet." "thou livest well if one well hid well lives, and thy great genius in being concealed is revealed." d. is elsewhere used by owen as the initial of dominus. the suggestion that ad. d.b. represents ad dominum baconum is therefore reasonable. thomas powell published in the "attourney's academy." the book is dedicated "to true nobility and tryde learning beholden to no mountaine for eminence, nor supportment for height, francis, lord verulam and viscount st. albanes." then follow these lines:-- "o give me leave to pull the curtaine by that clouds thy worth in such obscurity. good seneca, stay but a while thy bleeding, t' accept what i received at thy reading: here i present it in a solemne strayne, and thus i pluckt the curtayne backe again." in the "mirrour of state and eloquence," published in , the frontispiece is a very bad copy of marshall's portrait of bacon prefixed to the gilbert wat's "advancement of learning." under it are these lines:-- "grace, honour, virtue, learning, witt, are all within this porture knitt and left to time that it may tell, what worth within this peere did dwell." the frontispiece previously referred to of "truth brought to light and discovered by time, or a discourse and historicall narration of the first xiiii. yeares of king james reign," published in , is full of cryptic meaning and in one section of it there is a representation of a coffin out of which is growing "a spreading tree full fraught with various fruits most fresh and fair to make succeeding times most rich and rare." the fruits are books and manuscripts. the volume contains speeches of bacon and copies of official documents signed by him. the books of the emblem writers are still more remarkable. "jacobi bornitii emblemata ethico politica," , contains at least a dozen plates in which bacon is represented. a suggestive emblem is no. of cornelii giselberti plempii amsterodarnum monogrammon, bearing date , the year of shakespeare's death. it is now reproduced (fig. v.). it will be observed that the initial letters of each word in the sentence--_obscænumque nimis crepuit fortuna batavis appellanda_--yield f. bacon. there are in other designs figures which are evidently intended to represent bacon. emblem xxxvi. shows the inside of a printer's shop and two men at work in the foreground blacking and fixing the type. behind is a workman setting type, and standing beside him, apparently directing, or at any rate observing him, is a man with the well-known bacon hat on. the contention may be stated thus:--francis bacon possessed, to quote macaulay, "the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men." hallam described him as "the wisest, greatest of mankind," and affirmed that he might be compared to aristotle, thucydides, tacitus, philippe de comines, machiavelli, davila, hume, "all of these together," and confirming this view addison said that "he possessed at once all those extraordinary talents which were divided amongst the greatest authors of antiquity." at twelve years of age in industry he surpassed the capacity, and, in his mind, the range of his contemporaries, and had acquired a thorough command of the classical and modern languages. "he, after he had survaied all the records of antiquity, after the volumes of men, betook himself to the volume of the world and conquered whatever books possest." having, whilst still a youth, taken all knowledge to be his province, he had read, marked, and absorbed the contents of nearly every book that had been printed. how that boy read! points of importance he underlined and noted in the margin. every subject he mastered--mathematics, geometry, music, poetry, painting, astronomy, astrology, classical drama and poetry, philosophy, history, theology, architecture. then--or perhaps before--came this marvellous conception, "like god i will be seen by my works, although my image shall never be visible--_mente videbor_. by the mind i shall be seen." so equipped, and with such a scheme, he commenced and successfully carried through that colossal enterprise in which he sought the good of all men, though in a despised weed. "this," he said, "whether it be curiosity or vainglory, or (if one takes it favourably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed." translations of the classics, of histories, and other works were made. in those he no doubt had assistance by the commandment of more wits than his own, which is a thing he greatly affected. books came from his pen--poetry and prose--at a rate which, when the truth is revealed, will literally "stagger humanity." books were written by others under his direction. he saw them through the press, and he did more. he had his own wood blocks of devices, some, at any rate, of which were his own design, and every book produced under his direction, whether written by him or not, was marked by the use of one or more of these wood blocks. the favourite device was the light a and the dark a. probably the first book published in england which was marked with this device was _de rep. anglorum instauranda libri decem, authore thoma chalonero equite, anglo_. this was printed by thomas vautrollerius,[ ] and bears date . vautrollier, and afterwards richard field, printed many of the books in the issue of which bacon was concerned from onwards. henry bynneman, and afterwards his assignees ralph newbery and henry denham and george bishop, who was associated with denham, were also printing books issued under his auspices, and later adam islip, george eld and james haviland came in for a liberal share of his patronage. the cost of printing and publishing must have been very great. if the facts ever come to light it will probably be found that burghley was bacon's mainstay for financial support. it will also be found that lady anne bacon and anthony bacon were liberal contributors to the funds, and that the cause of francis bacon's monetary difficulties and consequent debts was the heavy obligation which he personally undertook in connection with the production of the elizabethan literature. in the dedications, prefaces, and epistles "to the reader" also francis bacon's mind may be recognised. when addison wrote of bacon, "one does not know which to admire most in his writings, the strength of reason, force of style, or brightness of imagination," his words might have been inspired by these prefixes to the literature of this period. when once the student has made himself thoroughly acquainted with bacon's style of writing prefaces he can never fail to recognise it, especially if he reads the passages aloud. the epistle dedicatorie to the edition of barclay's "argenis," signed kingesmill long, is one of the finest examples of baconian english extant. who but the writer of the shakespeare plays could have written that specimen of musical language? to hear it read aloud gives all the enjoyment of listening to a fine composition of music. it is the same with the shakespeare plays; only when they are read aloud can the richness and charm of the language they contain be appreciated. bacon's work can never be understood by anyone who has not realised the marvellous character of the mind of the boy, his phenomenal industry, and the fact that "he could imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works." it has been suggested that he had a secret society, by the agency of which he carried through his works, but it is difficult to find any evidence that such a society existed. it may be that he had helpers without there having been anything of the nature of a society. from to (thirty years) with the exception of the trifles published as essays in , there are no acknowledged fruits of his work to which his name is attached. even the two books of the "advancement of learning," published in , would have made little demands on his time. edmund burke said: "who is there that hearing the name of bacon does not instantly recognise everything of genius the most profound, of literature the most extensive, of discovery the most penetrating, of observation of human life the most distinguished and refined." for such a man to write "the two books" would be no hard or lengthy task. the wonder is that francis bacon should have attached his name to the edition of the essays. he had written and published under other names tomes of essays of at least equal merit. in aphorism of the "novum organum" bacon says, "but how sincere i am in my profession of affection and goodwill towards the received sciences my published writings, especially the books on the advancement of learning, sufficiently shew." what are the published writings referred to? the only works which bore his name were the incomplete volume of the essays and the "wisdom of the ancients," to neither of which the words quoted are applicable. anthony bacon, writing to lady anne in april, , referring to her "motherly offer" to help francis out of debt by being content to bestow the whole interest in an estate in essex, called markes, said "beseeching you to believe that being so near and dear unto me as he is, it cannot but be a grief unto me to see a mind that hath given so sufficient proof of itself in having brought forth many good thoughts for the general to be overburdened and cumbered with a care of clearing his particular estate." in nothing had been published under bacon's name, and there is not any production of his known which would justify anthony's remark. what was his motive in selecting this insignificant little volume of essays whereby to proclaim himself a writer? one can understand his object in addressing james in _the two books of the advancement of learning_. he obtained in , as peacham has it, "preferment by his patrone's letter" by being appointed solicitor-general. during all this period-- to --"the most exquisitely constructed mind that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men" appears to have been dormant. take the first three volumes of spedding's "life and letters," and carefully note all that is recorded as the product of that mind during the years when it must have been at the zenith of its power and activity. all the letters and tracts accredited to bacon in them which have come down to us would not account for six months--not for three months--of its occupation. the explanation that he was building up his great system of inductive philosophy is quite inadequate. rawley speaks of the "novum organum" as having been in hand for twelve years. this would give as the year when it was commenced. the "cogitata et visa," of which it was an amplification, was probably written in or , for on the th february, - , bodley writes acknowledging the receipt of it and commenting on it. rawley says that it was during the last five years of bacon's life that he composed the greatest part of his books and writings both in english and latin, and supplies a list which comprises all his acknowledged published works except the "novum organum" and the essays. in "the statesmen and favourites of england since the reformation," it is stated that the universal knowledge and comprehension of things rendered francis bacon the observation of great and wise men, and afterward the wonder of all. yet it is remarkable how few are the references to him amongst his contemporaries. practically the only one that would enable a reader to gain any knowledge of his personality is francis osborn, who, in letters to his son, published in , describes him as he was in the last few years of his life. no one has left data which enables a clear impression to be formed of francis bacon as he was up to his fortieth year. the omission may be described as a conspiracy of silence. how exactly the circumstances appear to fit in with the first line of john owen's epigram to dominus b., published in !--"thou livest well if one well hid well lives"; and if the suggestion now put forward be correct that bacon deliberately resolved that his image and personality should never be seen, but only the fruits of his mind--the issues of his brain, to use rawley's expression--how apt is the second line of the epigram: "and thy great genius in being concealed, is revealed." footnotes: [ ] "of the advancement of learning," , page . [ ] "of the advancement of learning," , pages , . [ ] is the numerical value of the name "bacon." the stop preceding it denotes cypher. [ ] vautrollier was a scholar and printer who came to england from paris or roan about the beginning of elizabeth's reign, and first commenced business in blackfriars. in he printed _jordanus brunus_, for which he was compelled to fly. in the next year he was in edinburgh, where, by his help, scottish printing was greatly improved. eventually his pardon was procured by powerful friends, amongst whom was thomas randolph. in richard field, who was apprenticed to vautrollier, married jakin, his daughter, and on his death in succeeded to the business. chapter xv. burghley and bacon. there was published in "the life of the great statesman william cecil, lord burghley." the preface signed by arthur collins states:-- the work i have for several years engaged in, of treating of those families that have been barons of this kingdom, necessarily induced me to apply to our nobility for such helps, as might illustrate the memory of their ancestors. and several noblemen having favour'd me with the perusal of their family evidences, and being recommended to the right honourable the present earl of exeter, his lordship out of just regard to the memory of his great ancestor, was pleased to order the manuscript life of the lord burghley to be communicated to me. which being very old and decayed and only legible to such who are versed in ancient writings it was with great satisfaction that i copied it literatim. and that it may not be lost to the world, i now offer it to the view of the publick. it fully appears to be wrote in the reign of queen elizabeth soon after his lordship's death, by one who was intimate with him, and an eye witness of his actions for the last twenty-five years. it needs no comment to set it off; that truth and sincerity which shines through the whole, will, i don't doubt have the same weight with the readers as it had with me and that they will be of opinion it's too valuable to be buried in oblivion. this "life of lord burghley" is referred to by nares and other of his biographers as having been written by "a domestic." it contains about , words and is the most authentic account extant of the great statesman's life. the narrative is full, but the observations on the character and habits of burghley are by far the most important feature. the method of treatment of the subject is after bacon's style; the life abounds with phrases and with tricks of diction, which enable it to be identified as his. the concluding sentences could only have been written with bacon's pen:-- and so leaving his soule with god, his fame to the world, and the truth to all charitable mynds, i leave the sensure to all judicious christians, who truly practising what they professe, will better approve, and more indifferentlie interpret it, than envie or malice can disprove it. the best sort will ever doe right, the worst can but imagine mischief and doe wrong; yet this is a comfort, the more his virtues are troden downe, the more will theire brightnes appeare. virtus vulnerata virescit. in the "responsio ad edictum reginæ angliæ" of the jesuit parsons had appeared, attacking the queen and her advisers (especially burghley), to whom were attributed all the evils of england and the disturbances of christendom. the reply to this was entrusted to francis bacon, who responded with a pamphlet entitled "certain observations upon a libel published this present year, ." it was first printed by dr. rawley in the "resuscitatio" in . at the time it was written it was circulated largely in manuscript, for at least eight copies, somewhat varying from each other, have been preserved.[ ] it is quite possible that it was printed at the time, but that no copy has survived. throughout the whole work there are continual references to burghley. chapter vi. is entirely devoted to his defence and is headed "certain true general notes upon the actions of the lord burghley." either "the life" and the "observations on a libel" are by the same writer or the author of the former borrowed the latter very freely. it is to be regretted that the original manuscript of the "life" cannot now be found. in it was at burghley house. application has been made to the present marquis of exeter for permission to inspect it, but his lordship's librarian has no knowledge of its existence. if it could be examined it is probable that if the text was not in bacon's handwriting some notes or alterations might be recognised as his. the writer says he was an eye witness of burghley's life and actions twenty-five years together--that would be from to , which would well accord with the present contention. if bacon was the author it throws considerable light on his relations with burghley and establishes the fact that they were of the most cordial and affectionate character. it is reported that bacon said that in the time of the burghleys--father and son--clever or able men were repressed, and mainly upon this has been based the impression that burghley opposed francis bacon's progress. burghley's biographer refers to this report. he writes: "he was careful and desirous to furder and advaunce men of quality and desart to be councellors and officers to her majesty wherein he placed manie and laboured to bring in more ... yet would envy with her slaunders report he hindered men from rising; but howe true it is wise men maie judge, for it was the queene to take whom she pleased and not in a subject to preferree whom he listed." it will eventually be proved that such a report conveys an incorrect view. in the letter of ,[ ] addressed to burghley, bacon says:--"besides i do not find in myself so much self-love, but that the greater parts of my thoughts are to deserve well (if i were able) of my friends and namely of your lordship; who being the atlas of this commonwealth, the honour of my house, and the second founder of my poor estate, i am tied by all duties, both of a good patriot, and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever i am to do your service," and later in the letter he employs the phrase, "and if your lordship will not carry me on," and then threatens to sell the inheritance that he has, purchase some quick revenue that may be executed by another, and become some sorry bookmaker or a pioneer in that mine of truth which anaxagoras said lay so deep. again, in a letter to burghley, dated st march, , he says:--"lastly, that howsoever this matter may go, yet i may enjoy your lordship's good favour and help as i have done in regard to my private estate, which as i have not altogether neglected so i have but negligently attended and which hath been bettered only by yourself (the queen except) and not by any other in matter of importance." further on he says: "thus again desiring the continuance of your lordship's goodness as i have hitherto found it on my part sought also to deserve, i commend," etc. it is very easy, with little information as to bacon's actions and little knowledge of the period, to form a definite opinion as to the relations of bacon and burghley. the more information as to the one and knowledge of the other one gets, the more difficult does it become to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. here was the son of elizabeth's great lord keeper, the nephew of her trusted minister, himself from his boyhood a _persona grata_ with the queen, of brilliant parts and great wisdom--if he had been a mere place-hunter his desires could have been satisfied over and over again. there was some condition of circumstance, of which nothing has hitherto been known, which prevented him from obtaining the object of his desires. that he had a definite object, and had mapped out a course by which he hoped to achieve it, is evident from his letters[ ] already quoted. it is equally clear that the course he sought to pursue entailed his abandoning the law as a profession. either he would only have such place as he desired, and on his own terms, or he was known to be following some course which, although not distasteful to his close friends, caused him to be held in suspicion, if not distrust, by the courtiers with whom elizabeth was surrounded. every additional fact that comes to light seems to point to the truth being that through his life burghley was francis bacon's staunch friend and supporter. upon sir nicholas bacon's death burghley appears with bodley to have been maintaining bacon in his travels abroad. upon his return to england burghley gave him financial support in his great project. in there was a crisis--someone had been spending money for the past twelve years freely in making english literature. that cannot be gainsaid. burghley appears to have pulled up and remonstrated; hence bacon's letter containing the threat before referred to. it is significant that it was immediately after this letter was written that bacon's association with essex commenced. bacon would take him and southampton into his confidence and seek their help. essex was just the man to respond with enthusiasm. francis introduced anthony to him. the services of the brothers were placed at his disposal, and he undertook to manage the queen. the office of attorney-general for francis would meet the case. "it was dangerous in a factious age to have my lord essex his favour," says the biographer before quoted.[ ] that burghley was favourable to his appointment as attorney-general two letters written by francis to lord keeper puckering in testify. in the first bacon writes: "i pray your lordship to call to remembrance my lord treasurer's kind course, who affirmed directly all the rest to be unfit. and because _vis unita fortior_ i beg your lordship to take a time with the queen when my lord treasurer is present." in a second letter he writes: "i thought good to remember your good lordship and to request you as i touched in my last that if my lord treasurer be absent your lordship would forbear to fall into my business with her majesty lest it mought receive some foil before the time when it should be resolutely dealt in." only burghley was found to support essex's advocacy, and on the whole this was not to be wondered at. such an appointment, to say the least, would have been an experiment. possibly essex was the stumbling-block, but it may be that the real objection on the part of the queen and her advisers was that bacon was known to be so amorous of certain learned arts, so much given over to invention, that the consensus of opinion was that he was thereby unfitted to hold an important office of the state. or it may be that he was discredited by his suspected or known association with certain printers. there was some reason of which no explanation can now be traced. it has been suggested that in there was a crisis in bacon's life. that is evident from the letter to burghley written in that year. john harrington's translation of "orlando furioso" was published about this time. the manuscript, which is in a perfect condition, is in the british museum, and has been marked in bacon's handwriting throughout. the pagination and the printer's signature are placed at the commencement of the stanzas to be printed on each page, and there are instructions to the printer at the end which are not in his hand. there are good grounds for attributing the notes at the end of each chapter to bacon. it is very improbable that sir john harrington had the classical knowledge which the writer of these notes must have possessed. there is a letter written by him to sir amias pawlett, dated january, - . he is relating an interview with king james, and says: "then he (the king) enquyrede muche of lernynge and showede me his owne in such sorte as made me remember my examiner at cambridge aforetyme. he soughte muche to knowe my advances in philosophie and utterede profounde sentences of aristotle and such lyke wryters, whiche i had never reade and which some are bolde enoughe to saye others do not understand." it would be difficult to mention any classical author with whose works the writer of these notes was not familiar, or to believe that "epigrams both pleasant and serious" ( ) came from the pen of that writer. at the end of the thirty-seventh chapter the following note occurs: "it was because she (porcia) wrote some verses in manner of an epitaph upon her husband after his decease: in which kind, that honourable ladie (widow of the late lord john russell) deserveth no lesse commendation, having done as much for two husbands. and whereas my author maketh so great bost only of one learned woman in italie, i may compare (besides one above all comparison that i have noted in the twentith booke) three or foure in england out of one family, and namely the sisters of that learned ladie, as witness that verse written by the meanest of the foure to the ladie burlie which i doubt if cambridge or oxford can mend." the four si mihi quem cupio cures mildreda she wrote to daughters of remitti lady burlie sir anthonie tu bona, tu melior, tu mihi sola to send a cooke-- soror; kinsman of ladie burlie, sin mali cessando retines, & trans hers into ladie russell, mare mittis, cornwall, lady bacon, tu mala, tu peior, tu mihi nulla where she mistress soror. dwelt, and to killygrew. is si cornubiam, tibi pax sit & stop his going omnia læta, beyond sea. sin mare ceciliæ nuncio bella. vale.[ ] the writer of the latin verse was _not_ ladie russell, and it was written _to_ ladie burlie, so she must either be ladie bacon or mistress killigrew. it is not an improbable theory that ladie bacon was writing to her sister mildred, who had, through her husband, power either to send francis to cornwall or permit him to be sent away over the seas. there is a copy of machiavelli's "history of florence," , with bacon's notes in the margins.[ ] at the end is a memorandum giving the dates when the book was read "in cornwall at," and then follow two words, the second of which is "lake," but the first is undecipherable. is it possible that lady anne bacon had a house in cornwall which francis bacon, inheriting after her death, was in the habit of visiting for retirement? but this is conjecture. the following point is of interest. in the "life of burghley" ( ) it is said that: "bookes weare so pleasing to him, as when he gott libertie to goe unto his house to take ayre, if he found a book worth the openinge, he wold rather loose his ridinge than his readinge; and yet ryding in his garden walks upon his litle moile was his greatest disport: but so soone as he came in he fell to his readinge againe or els to dispatchinge busines." rawley, in his "life of bacon" ( ), attributes an exactly similar habit to the philosopher, and almost in identical phrase: "for he would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies as walking, or taking the air abroad in his coach or some other befitting recreation; and yet he would lose no time, inasmuch as upon his first and immediate return he would fall to reading again, and so suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improvement." it is difficult to approach any phase of the life of bacon without being confronted with what appears to be evidence of careful preparation to obscure the facts. this observation does not result from imagination or prejudice; bacon's movements are always enshrouded in mystery. investigation and research will, however, eventually establish as a fact that there was a closer connection between burghley and bacon than historians have recognised, and that they had a strong attachment for each other. footnotes: [ ] harl. mss., , pp. and ; additional mss., , , p. ; harl. mss., , ; harl. mss., , , p. ; cambridge univ. lib., mm. v. ; cotton mss., tit., chap. vii., p. b; harl. mss., , p. ; cotton mss., jul., f. vi., p. . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see appendix. [ ] if you, o mildred, will take care to send back to me him whom i desire, you will be my good, my more than good, my only sister; but if, unfortunately, by doing nothing you keep him back and send him across the sea, you will be bad, more than bad, nay no sister at all of mine. if he comes to cornwall, peace and all joys be with you, but if he goes by sea to sicily i declare war. farewell. [ ] one note on this book contains an interesting historical fact hitherto unknown. on page the text states: "among the conspirators was nicholo fedini whom they employed as chauncellor, he persuaded with a hope more certaine, revealed to piero, all the practice argreed by his enemies, and delivered him a note of all their names." bacon has made the following note in the margin: "ex (_i.e._, essex) did the like in england which he burnt at shirfr smiths house in fenchurch street." chapter xvi. the folio edition of shakespeare's plays. sir sydney lee has written[ ]:--"as a specimen of typography, the first folio is not to be commended. there are a great many contemporary folios of larger bulk far more neatly and correctly printed. it looks as though jaggard's printing office was undermanned. the misprints are numerous, and are especially conspicuous in the pagination." in the same year was published "the theater of honour and knighthood," translated from the french of andreu favine. william jaggard was the printer. it is a large folio volume containing about , pages, and is referred to as being issued by jaggard as an example of the printer's art to maintain his reputation, which had suffered from the apparently careless manner in which the shakespeare folio was turned out. both books contain the same emblematic head-pieces and tail-pieces. there are, however, some considerable mispaginations in "the theater of honour." mispaginations were not infrequent in elizabethan and jacobean literature, but it is quite possible that they were not unintentional. the most glaring instance is to be found in the first edition of "the two bookes of francis bacon--of the proficience and advancement in learning, divine and humane," published by henrie tomes ( ). each leaf (not page) is numbered. the leaves of the first book are correctly numbered. in the second book there is no number on leaf . leaf is numbered , the right figure being printed upside down; is numbered ; from to the numbering is correct, and then the leaves are numbered as follows:-- , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and on correctly until the last page, , except that is numbered . it is impossible to attribute this mispagination to the printer's carelessness. this was the first work published bearing bacon's name, excepting the trifle of essays published in . there does not appear to have been any hurry in its production. it is quite a small volume, and yet the foregoing remarkable mispaginations occur. there must be some purpose in this which has yet to be found out. the shakespeare folio will be found to be one of the most perfect examples of the printer's art extant, because no work has been produced under such difficult conditions for the printer. there are few mistakes in pagination or spelling which are not intentional. the work is a masterpiece of enigma and cryptic design. the lines "to the reader" opposite to the title-page are a table or code of numbers. the same lines and the lettering on the title-page form another table. the ingenuity displayed in this manipulation of words and numbers to create analogies is almost beyond the comprehension of the human mind. the mispaginations are all intentional and have cryptic meanings. the acme of wit is the substitution of for on the last page of the tragedies; a hundred has been omitted in "hamlet," following , and other errors made in order to obtain this result on the last page. the manner in which the printer's signatures have been arranged with the pages is equally wonderful. the name william shakespeare must have been created without reference to him of stratford, who possibly bore or had assigned to him a somewhat similar name. a great superstructure is built up on the exact spelling of the words william shakespeare. the year was specially selected for the issue of the complete volume of the plays, because of the marvellous relations which the numbers composing it bear to the names william shakespeare and francis bacon, to the year , in which the birth of bacon is registered, and to and , the reputed dates of the birth and death of the stratford man. nor do the wonders end here. the use of numerical analogies has been carried into the construction of the english language. all this, and much more, will be made manifest when the work of mr. e. v. tanner comes to be investigated and appreciated. he has made the greatest literary discovery of all time. the wonder is how it has been possible for anyone to pierce the veil and reveal the secrets of the volume. the value of the shakespeare folio will be enhanced. it will stand alone as the greatest monument of the achievements of the human intellect. to any literary critic who should honour this book by noticing it, it is probable the foregoing statements may seem extravagant and untrustworthy. to such the request is now made that before making any comment he will inspect the proof of the foregoing statements which are in the writer's possession. the dramas of shakespeare are, by universal consent, placed at the head of all literature. the invitation is now put forth in explicit terms, and facilities are offered for the investigation of the truth, or otherwise, of every statement made in the foregoing paragraph. footnotes: [ ] "a life of shakespeare," , nd edition, p. . chapter xvii. the authorized version of the bible, . is it not strange that there is no mention of any connection of francis bacon with this work? there was a conference held at hampton court palace before king james on january, , between the episcopalians and puritans. john rainoldes urged the necessity of providing for his people a uniform translation of the bible. rainoldes was the leader of the puritans, a person of prodigious reading and doctrine, and the very treasury of erudition. dr. hall, bishop of norwich, reports that "he alone was a well furnished library, full of all faculties, of all studies, of all learning--the memory and reading of that man were near a miracle." the king approved the suggestion and commissioned for that purpose fifty-four of the most learned men in the universities and other places. there was a "careful selection of revisers made by some unknown but very competent authority." the translators were divided into six bands of nine each, and the work of translation was apportioned out to them. a set of rules was drawn up for their guidance, which has happily come down to modern times--almost the only record that remains of this great undertaking. these concise rules have a homogeneity, breadth and vigour which point to bacon as their author. each reviser was to translate the whole of the original allocated to his company; then they were to compare their translations together, and, as soon as a company had completed its part, it was to communicate the result to the other companies, that nothing might pass without the general consent. if any company, upon the review of the translation so sent, differed on any point, they were to note their objection and state their reasons for disagreement. if the differences could not be adjusted, there was a committee of arbitration which met weekly, consisting of a representative from each company, to whom the matter in dispute was referred. if any point was found to be very obscure, letters were to be addressed, by authority, to learned persons throughout the land inviting their judgment. the work was commenced in . rainoldes belonged to the company to whom isaiah and the prophets were assigned. he died in , before the work was completed. during his illness his colleagues met in his bedroom so that they might retain the benefit of his learning. only forty-seven out of the fifty-four names are known. when the companies had completed their work, one complete copy was made at oxford, one at cambridge, and one at westminster. those were sent to london. then two members were selected from each company to form a committee to review and polish the whole. the members met daily at stationers' hall and occupied nine months in their task. then a final revision was entrusted to dr. thomas bilson and dr. miles smith, and in their labours were completed and the result was handed to the king. many of the translators have left specimens of their writing in theological treatises, sermons, and other works. a careful perusal of all these available justifies the assertion that amongst the whole body there was not one man who was so great a literary stylist as to be able to write certain portions of the authorised version, which stamp it as one of the two greatest examples of the english language. naturally the interest centres on dr. thomas bilson and dr. miles smith, to whom the final revision was entrusted. there are some nine or ten theological works by the former and two sermons by the latter. unless the theory of a special divine inspiration for the occasion be admitted, it is clear that neither bilson nor miles smith could have given the final touches to the bible. and now a curious statement has come down to us. in the translators handed their work to the king, and in he returned it to them completed. james was incapable of writing anything to which the term beautiful could be applied. what had happened to the translators' work whilst it was left in his hands? james had an officer of state at that time of whom a contemporary biographer wrote that "he had the contrivance of all king james his designs, until the match with spain." it will eventually be proved that the whole scheme of the authorised version of the bible was francis bacon's. he was an ardent student not only of the bible, but of the early manuscripts. st. augustine, st. jerome, and writers of theological works, were studied by him with industry. he has left his annotations in many copies of the bible and in scores of theological works. the translation must have been a work in which he took the deepest interest and which he would follow from stage to stage. when the last stage came there was only one writer of the period who was capable of turning the phrases with that matchless style which is the great charm of the shakespeare plays. whoever that stylist was, it was to him that james handed over the manuscripts which he received from the translators. that man then made havoc of much of the translation, but he produced a result which, on its literary merits, is without an equal. thirty years ago another revision took place, but, notwithstanding the advantages which the revisers of had over their predecessors of , their version has failed to displace the older version, which is too precious to the hearts of the people for them to abandon it. although not one of the translators has left any literary work which would justify the belief that he was capable of writing the more beautiful portions of the bible, fortunately bacon has left an example which would rather add lustre to than decrease the high standard of the bible if it were incorporated in it. as to the truth of this statement the reader must judge from the following prayer, which was written after his fall, and which was described by addison as resembling the devotion of an angel rather than a man:-- _remember, o lord, how thy servant hath walked before thee; remember what i have first sought, and what been principal in mine intentions. i have loved thy assemblies; i have mourned for the divisions of thy church; i have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary._ _this vine, which thy right hand hath planted in this nation, i have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain, and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods._ _the state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes. i have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. i have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men._ _if any have been mine enemies, i thought not of them, neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but i have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness._ _thy creatures have been my books, but thy scriptures much more. i have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but i have found thee in thy temples._ _thousand have been my sins and ten thousand my transgressions, but thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart, through thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal upon thine altar._ _o lord, my strength, i have since my youth met with thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible providence. as thy favours have increased upon me, so have thy corrections, so that thou hast been ever near me, o lord; and ever, as thy worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me, and when i have ascended before men, i have descended in humiliation before thee._ _and now, when i thought most of peace and honour, thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me according to thy former lovingkindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard but as a child. just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea to the sea? earth, heavens, and all these are nothing to thy mercies._ _besides my innumerable sins, i confess before thee that i am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which i have neither put into a napkin, nor put it (as i ought) to exchangers, where it might have made most profit, but misspent it in things for which i was least fit so that i may truly say my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage._ _be merciful unto me, o lord, for my saviour's sake, and receive me into thy bosom or guide me in thy ways._ there is another feature about the first editions of the authorised version which arrests attention. in the first folio edition was published. the design with archers, dogs and rabbits which is to be found over the address "to the christian reader" which introduces the genealogies is also to be found in the folio edition of shakespeare over the dedication to the most noble and incomparable paire of brethren, over the catalogue and elsewhere. except that the mark of query which is on the head of the right hand pillar in the design in the bible is missing in the shakespeare folio, and the arrow which the archer on the right hand side is shooting contains a message in the design used in the bible and is without one in the shakespeare folio. in the quarto edition of the authorised version on the title-page of the genealogies are two designs; that at the head of the page is printed from the identical block which was used on the title-page of the first edition of "venus and adonis," , and the first edition of "lucrece," . at the bottom is the design with the light a and dark a, which is over the dedication to sir william cecil in the "arte of english poesie," . an octavo edition, which is now very rare, was also published in . on the title-page of the genealogies will be found the design with the light a and dark a which is used on several of the shakespeare quartos and elsewhere. (figure xxi.) the selection of these designs was not made by chance. they were deliberately chosen to create similitudes between certain books, and mark their connection with each other. the revised translation of the bible was undertaken as a national work. it was carried out under the personal supervision of the king, but every record of the proceedings has disappeared. the british museum does not contain a manuscript connected with the proceedings of the translators. in the record office have been preserved the original documents referring to important proceedings of that period. the parliamentary, judicial, and municipal records are, on the whole, in a complete condition, but ask for any records connected with the authorised version of the bible and the reply is: "we have none." and yet it is reasonable to suppose that manuscripts and documents of such importance would be preserved. where are they to be found? chapter xviii. how bacon marked books with the publication of which he was connected. at a very early period in the history of printing, the custom was introduced of placing on title-pages, at the heads and ends of the chapters, emblematical designs. in english printed books these are seldom to be found until the latter half of the th century. an investigation of the books of the period reveals the fact that the same blocks were used by different printers. articles have been written on the migration of printer's blocks, but, so far, no explanation has been offered as to any object other than decoration for which these blocks were used. among other designs in use between and are a number of variants of a device in which a light a and a dark a form the most conspicuous points. camden, in his "remaines concerning britaine," , commences a chapter on "impresses," at the head of which the device is found, thus:--"an imprese (as the italians call it) is a device in picture with his motto, or word, borne by noble and learned personages, to notifie some particular conceit of their owne: as emblemes (that we may omitte other differences) doe propound some general instructions to all." then follow a number of examples, and amongst them this:-- "variete and vicissitude of humane things he seemed to shew which parted his shield, per pale, argent & sables and counter-changeably writte in the argent, ater and in the sables albus." but even if the light a and dark a are used in the design of the head-piece to represent albus and ater it does not afford any satisfactory explanation as to why they are so used. in mdcxvi. was published "les emblemes moraulx et militaires du sieur jacob de bruck angermundt nouvellement mis en lumiere a strasbourg, par jacob de heyden graveur." in emblem no. , now reproduced, the light a and the dark a will be found in the branch of the tree which the man is about to cut off. (figure vi.)[ ] another emblem does not contain the light a and dark a, but the bark of the trunk and branches of the tree on the design exhibit a strong contrast between the dark and light, which feature is represented in most of the title-pages of books in which the device is found. (figure vii.) mr. charles t. jacob, chiswick press, london, who is the author of "books and printing" (london, ), and several works on typography, referring to an article on the migration of woodblocks, said:-- it is a well-known fact to bibliographers that the same blocks were sometimes used by different printers in two places quite far apart, and at various intervals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. that the same blocks were employed is apparent from a comparison of technical defects of impressions taken at different places, and at two periods. there was no method of duplication in existence until stereotyping was first invented in ; even then the details were somewhat crude, and the process being new, it met with much opposition and was practically not adopted until the early part of the nineteenth century. electrotyping, which is the ideal method of reproducing woodblocks, was not introduced until or thereabouts. of course, it was quite possible to re-engrave the same design, but absolute fidelity could not be relied on by these means, even if executed by the same hand. the earliest date which appears on a book in which the head-piece, containing the device of the light a and dark a is found, is . the book is "de furtivis literarum notis vulgo. de ziferis," ioan. baptista porta neapolitano authore. cum privilegio neapoli, apud ioa. mariam scotum. mdlxiii. (figure viii.) it is only used once--over the dedication ioanni soto philippi regis. there is no other head-piece in the book. john baptist porta was, with the exception of trithemius, whom he quotes, the first writer on cyphers. at the time at which he wrote cypher-writing was studied in every court in europe. it is significant that this emblematic device is used in the earliest period in which head-pieces were adopted, in a book which is descriptive and is in fact a text-book of the art of concealment. this has, however, now been proved to be a falsely dated book. the first edition of this work was published in naples in by ioa. marius scotus, but this does not contain the a a design. in the book was published in london by john wolfe; this reprint was dedicated to henry percy, earl of northumberland. after the edition had been printed off, the title-page was altered to correspond with the naples publication. the dedication was taken out, and a reprint of the original dedication was substituted, and over this was placed the a a head-piece; then an edition was struck off, and, until to-day, it has been sold and re-sold as the first edition of baptista porta's work. it is difficult to offer any explanation as to why this fraud was committed. the first occasion upon which this device was used appears to be in a book so rare that no copy of it can be found, either in the british museum or the bodleian library. unfortunately, in the copy belonging to the writer, the title-page and the two first pages are missing. the work is called "hebraicum alphabethum jo. bovlaese." it is a hebrew grammar, with proof-sheets added. it is interleaved with sheets of english-made paper, containing bacon's handwriting. bound up with it is another hebrew grammar, similarly interleaved, called "sive compendium, quintacunque ratione fieri potuit amplessimum, totius linguæ," published in paris in . the book ends with the sentence: "ex collegio montis--acuti decembris "; then follow two pages in hebrew, with the latin translation over it, headed "decem præcepta decalogi exod." over this is the design containing the light a and the dark a, and the squirrel and rabbits. (figure ix.) one thing is certain, that the copy now referred to was in the possession of bacon, and that the interleaved sheets of paper contain his handwriting, in which have been added page by page the equivalents of the hebrew in greek, chaldæic, syriac and arabic. in christophor plantin published an edition of andrea alciat's "emblemata." on page is emblem no. , "in dies meliora." this has been re-designed for the edition. it contains at the back the pillars of hercules, with a scroll around bearing the motto: "plus oltre." these pillars stand on some arches, immediately in front of which is a mound or pyramid, two sides of which are seen. on one is to be found the light a and on the other the dark a. the design was appropriated by whitney, and appears on page in the edition of his emblems. from this time forth, a a devices are to be found in numbers of books published in england, and on some published on the continent. amongst the former are the first editions of "venus and adonis," "lucrece," the "sonnets," the quarto editions of shakespeare's plays, the folio edition ( ) of his works, and the first quarto and octavo editions ( ) of the authorised version of the bible. there are fourteen distinct designs, in all of which, varying widely in other respects, the light a and the dark a constitute the outstanding figure. the use of the two letters so shaded must have had a special significance. in nearly every case it will be observed that the letter a is so drawn as to make the letter c on the inside. was its significance of general knowledge amongst printers and readers, or was it an earmarking device used by one person, or by a society? a possible interpretation of the use of the light and dark shading, is that the book in which it is used contains more than is revealed; that is to say, the overt and the concealed. a copy of "Ã�sopiphrygis vita et fabellæ cum latina interpretatione" exists, date . the book is annotated by bacon. on one side is the greek text and on the opposite page the latin translation. on pages and are two initial letters printed from blocks of the letter a. these are coloured so that the one on the left hand side is a light a, and that on the opposite page a dark a. there are other designs which are used apparently as part of a scheme. the identical block (figure x.) which was used at the top of the title page of "venus and adonis" ( ) and "lucrece" ( ) did service on the title page of the genealogies in the quarto edition of the authorised version of the bible, . this design was, so far as can be traced, only used twice in the intervening nineteen years--on "an apologie of the earl of essex to master anthony bacon," penned by himself in , and printed by richard bradocke in , and in , on the "world of wonders," printed by richard field. it was of this book that caldecott, the bibliophile and shakespearean scholar, wrote: "the phraseology of shakespeare is better illustrated in this work than in any other book existing." the design which is found on the title page of the "sonnets of shakespeare," , is found also in the first edition of napier's "mirifici logarithmorum," , but printed from a different block. the design with archers shooting at the base of the central figure is to be found in a large number of the folio editions of the period. amongst these are the authorised version of the bible, , the "novum organum," , and the edition of shakespeare's works. there are other designs which are usually found accompanying the light a and dark a and the other devices before referred to. these designs were first brought into use from and practically cease to appear about . afterwards they are seldom seen except in books bearing bacon's name, and eventually they lapse. the last use of an a a device is over the life of the author in the second volume of an edition of bacon's essays edited by dr. william willymott, published by henry parson in . after an interval of about years a new design is made, which is not one of those employed by bacon. by means of these devices a certain number of books may be identified as forming a class by themselves. there is another feature connected with them which is of special interest. one man appears to have contributed to all the books thus marked--either the dedication, the preface,[ ] or the lines "to the reader"; in some cases all three. it may be urged in opposition to this view that in those days there was a form in which dedications and prefaces were written, and that this was more or less followed by many writers, but this contention will not stand investigation. there are tricks of phrasing and other peculiarities which enable certain literary productions to be identified as the work of one man. some of the finest elizabethan literature is to be found in the prefaces and dedications in these books. the theory now put forth is that francis bacon was directing the production of a great quantity of the elizabethan literature, and in every book in the production of which he was interested, he caused to be inserted one of these devices. he kept the blocks in his own custody; he sent them out to a printer when a book was approved by him for printing. on the completion of the work, the printer returned the blocks to bacon so that they could be sent elsewhere by him as occasion required. the most elaborate of the aa designs is figure xii., and the writer has only found it in one volume. it is "le historie della citta di fiorenza," by m. jacopo, published in lyons by theobald ancelin in . "exact was his correspondence abroad and at home, constant his letters, frequent his visits, great his obligations," states the contemporary biographer, speaking of francis bacon. it is difficult to arrive at the exact meaning of these words. there is little correspondence with those abroad remaining, no record of visits, no particulars of the great obligations into which he entered. in the dedication of the edition of the "histoire naturelle" to monseigneur de chasteauneuf, the author speaking of bacon writes:--"le chancelier, qu'on a fait venir tant de fois en france, n'a point encore quitté l'angleterre avec tant de passion de nous découvrir ses merveilles que depuis qu'il a sceu le rang dont on avoit reconnu vos vertus." these frequent visits to france are unrecorded elsewhere, but here is definite testimony that they were made. there are good grounds for believing that bacon was throughout his life, until their deaths, in constant communication with christophor plantin ( - ), aldus manutius, henry stephen ( - ), and also with robert stephens the third ( - ). all these men were not only printers, but brilliant scholars and writers. if search be made, it is quite possible that correspondence or other evidence of their friendship may come to light. be that as it may, there were undoubtedly a number of books published on the continent between and which in the sparta upon them bear testimony to bacon's association with their publication. the following are instances of where the several designs which are reproduced may be found. they however occur in many other volumes. figure ix.--"the arte of english poesie," . " xiii.--"orlando furioso," . " xiv.--spencer's "fairie queen." " xv.--"florentine history translation," , and edition of barclay's "argenis." " xi.--"sonnets." " xvi.--simon pateriche's translation of "discourse against machiavel." " xvii.--lodge's translation of "seneca," . " xviii.--shakespeare folio, . " xix.--"dæmonologie," . " xx.--alciat's "emblems," published in paris, . footnotes: [ ] plates nos. vi. to xxi. will be found after the appendix. [ ] in the "advancement of learning" bacon says that demosthenes went so far in regard to the great force that the entrance and access into a cause had to make a good impression that he kept in readiness a stock of prefaces. chapter xix. bacon and emblemata. in "shakespeare and the emblem writers" the rev. henry green endeavours to show the similarities of thought and expression between the great poet and the authors of emblemata, but the line of enquiry which he there opened does not appear to have been followed by subsequent writers. to-day the emblemata literature is a _terra incognita_ except to a very few students, and yet it is full of interest, romance, and mystery. emblem literature may be said to have had its origin with andrea alciat, the celebrated italian jurisconsult, who was famous for his great knowledge and power of mind. in he published at milan an "emblematum libellus," or little book of emblems. green says: "it established, if it did not introduce, a new style of emblem literature, the classical in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mythic." the first edition now known to exist was published at augsburg in , a small octavo containing eighty-eight pages with ninety-seven emblems, and as many woodcuts. it was from time to time augmented, and passed through many editions. for some years the emblemata appears to have been produced chiefly by italians, with a few frenchmen. until the last half of the sixteenth century the output of books of this character was not large. thenceforth for the next hundred years the creation of emblems became a popular form of literary exercise. the italians continued to be prolific, but dutch, french, and german scholars were but little behind them. there were a few englishmen and spaniards who also practised the art. in was published a book called "letters from the dead to the dead," by oliver lector. in it attention is drawn to the remarkable features of some of the books on emblems printed during bacon's life, and to the evidence that he was in some manner connected with the publication of many of these volumes. the author claims this to be especially the case with the "emblemata moralia et bellica," , of jacob de bruck, of angermundt, and the "emblemata ethic politica" of j. bornitius. the emblem pictures for the most part appear to be picture puzzles. in the "critique upon the mythology of the ancients" bacon says:-- "it may pass for a farther indication of a concealed and secret meaning, that some of these fables are so absurd and idle in their narration as to proclaim and shew an allegory afar off. a fable that carries probability with it may be supposed invented for pleasure, or in imitation of history; but, those that would never be conceived or related in this way, must surely have a different use." if this line of reasoning be applied to the illustrations in the emblem books, it is clear that they conceal some hidden meaning, for they are apparently unintelligible, and the accompanying letterpress does not afford any illumination. jean baudoin was the translator of bacon's "essaies" into the french language ( ). baudoin published in - "recueil d'emblèmes divers avec des discours moraux, philos. et polit." in the preface he says: "le grand chancelier bacon m'ayant fait naître l'envie de travailler à ces emblèmes ... m'en a fourni les principaux que j'ai tirés de l'explication ingénieuse qu'il a donnée de quelques fables et de ses autres ouvrages." here is definite evidence of bacon's association with a book of emblems. the first volume of emblemata in which traces of bacon's hand are to be found is the edition of alciat's "emblems," published by the plantin press, with notes by claude mignault. it is in this edition, in emblem no. , "in dies meliora," that for the first time the light a and the dark a is to be found. in previous editions this device is absent. for this volume a new design has been engraved in which it appears. in the emblem books written in italian bacon does not appear to have been concerned, unless an exception be made of ripa's "iconologia," a copy of which contains his handwriting and initials. in some way he had control of a large number of those written in latin, and bearing names of dutch, french, and some italian authors, and also of several written in dutch and of the english writers. the field is a very wide one, and only a few of the principal examples can be mentioned. the most important work is the "emblemata moralia et bellica" of jacob à bruck, of angermundt, . "argentorati per jacobum ab heyden." with many of the designs in this volume oliver lector has dealt fully in "letters from the dead to the dead,"[ ] before referred to. there is another volume bearing the name of jacob à bruck, published in . only one copy of this book is known to be in existence, and that is in the royal library of st. petersburg. the "emblemata ethico politica of jacobus bornitius, , moguntiæ," is remarkable because many of the engravings contain portraits of bacon, namely, in sylloge prima, plates nos. vii., xxiii., xliv., xlv., xlvix.; and in sylloge ii., plates ix. and xxxvi. oliver lector says: "i have not met with an earlier edition of bornitius than . my conjecture, however, is that the manuscript came into the hands of gruter with other of bacon's published by him in the year ." there are two productions of janus jacobus boissardus in which bacon's hand may be recognised--"emblèmes latines avec l'interprétation françoise du i. pierre ioly messin. metis, ," and "emblematum liber. ipsa emblemata ab auctore delineata: a theodoro de bry sculpta et nunc recens in lucem edita," , frankfort. two editions of the latter were printed in the same year. the title-pages are identical, and the same plates have been used throughout, but the letterpress is in latin in the one, and in french in the other. in both, the dedications are addressed in french to madame de clervent, baronne de coppet, etc. the dedication of the former bears the name jan jacques boissard at the head, and addresses the lady as "que come estes addonnée à la speculation des choses qui appartiennent à l'instruction de l'âme." the dedication of the latter is signed ioly, who explains that he has translated the verses into french, so that they may be of more service to the dedicatee. otho van veen enjoys the distinction of having had rubens for a disciple. a considerable number of emblem books emanated from him. in were published at antwerp two editions of his "amorum emblemata." in one copy the verses are in latin, german, and french, and in the other in latin, english, and italian. there are commendatory verses in the latter, two of which are by daniel heinsius and r. v., who was robert verstegen, the author of "a restitution of decayed intelligence in antiquities." the dedication is "to the most honourable and worthie brothers william earle of pembroke, and phillip earle of montgomerie, patrons of learning and chevalrie," who are "the most noble and incomparable paire of brethren" to whom the shakespeare folio was dedicated. in this volume bacon has left his marks. "emblemata door zacharias heyns," published in rotterdam in , comprises four books bound together. the inscriptions over the plates are in latin. the letterpress, which is in dutch and french, apparently bears very little reference to the illustrations. johannis de brunes i.c. emblemata of sinne-werck, amsterdam, , is written in dutch. emblem viii. contains an indication that the number is a key. the "silenus alcibiades sive proteus" was published at middleburgh in . there is no author's name on the title-page, but the voor-reden, written in dutch, is signed j. cats. attached to two of the preliminary complimentary verses are the names of daniel heyns and josuah sylvester, the translator of "du bartas." the verses are in latin, dutch, and french. immediately following the title-page is a preface in latin, signed by majores de baptis. over this is the familiar emblem containing the archers, rabbits, and dogs, with the note of query on the right-hand side, and the message on the arrow. this volume is one of the most remarkable of the emblem books. the latin preface is autobiographical. if the writer can be identified as the author of "venus and adonis," it becomes one of the most important contributions to his biography. in , the year of shakespeare's death, was published at amsterdam a book bearing on its title-page the inscription: "cornelii giselberti plempii amsterodamum monogrammon." it contains fifty illustrations, with latin verses attached. emblem i. is reproduced (fig. v.) on reference to it, it will be seen that fortune stands on a globe, and with one hand is pushing off from the pinnacle of fame a man dressed as a player with a feather in his hat; with the other hand she is raising up a man who is wearing the bacon hat, but whose face is hidden. the prophecy expressed by the emblem is now being fulfilled. it will be seen that the initial letters of each word in the sentence of the letterpress--obscænùmque nimis crepuit, fortuna batavis appellanda--yield f. bacon. bacon's portrait is found in several of the illustrations in this book. other emblem writers whose works bear traces of bacon's co-operation are g. rollenhagen, j. camerius, j. typotius, d. hensius. [illustration: _fig. v._ _en fortuna: manu quos rupem ducit in altam, præcipites abigit: carnificina dea est. firma globo imponi voluerunt fata caducam, ipsa quoquè ut posset risus, & esse iocus. olim unctos salÿ qui præsilière per utres, ridebant caderet si qua puella malè. o quàm sæpe sales, plausumque merente ruinâ, erubuit vitium fors inhonest a suum! obscænùmque nimis crepuit, fortuna batavis appellanda; sono, quo sua curta vocant. quoque sono veteres olim sua furta latini: vt nec, homere, mali nomen odoris ames._ c. plempii. emblemata embl. i.] there yet remain to be mentioned two english emblem writers. a "choice of emblems" by geffrey whitney was published in by francis raphelengius in the house of christopher plantin at leyden. the dedication is to robert earle of leicester. there are only from fifteen to twenty original designs out of illustrations. the remainder are taken from other emblem writers, chiefly from alciat, sambucus, paradin, and hadrian junius. on page is the design headed "in dies meliora" found in the edition of alciat, but the letterpress, which is in english, is quite different from the latin verse attached to it in the alciat. the "minerva britanna" of henry peacham was published in . the emblem on the title-page[ ] represents the great secret of francis bacon's life, and on page · is an emblem in which the name shakespeare is represented. the volume is full of devices which will amply repay a careful study. apart from any connection which bacon may have had with this remarkable class of books, they are of great interest to the student of the elizabethan and jacobean periods. they contain pictorial representations full of information as to the habits and customs of the people. with the exception of whitney's "choice of emblems," a facsimile reprint of which was published in , edited by the rev. henry green, no reprint of any of these curious books has been issued. as the original editions of many of them are very rare, and of none of them plentiful, their study is a matter of difficulty, and few students find their way to this fascinating field of research. how close bacon's connection was with the writers of these books, or with their publishers, it is difficult to say, but there is considerable evidence that in some way he was able to introduce into every one of the books here enumerated, and many others, some plates illustrative of his inductive philosophy. footnotes: [ ] bernard quaritch, . [ ] see page . chapter xx. shakespeare's sonnets. "shakespeare's sonnets never before imprinted," have afforded commentators material for many volumes filled with theories which to the ordinary critical mind appear to have no foundation in fact. chapters have been written to prove that mr. w. h., the only begetter of the sonnets, was henry wriothesley, earl of southampton, and chapters have been written to prove that he was no such person, but that william herbert, earl of pembroke, was the man intended to be designated. theories have been elaborated to identify the individuals represented by the rival poet and the dark lady. not one of these theories is supported by the vestige of a shred of testimony that would stand investigation. there has not come down any evidence that shakspur, of stratford, knew either the earl of southampton, the earl of pembroke or marie fitton. the truth is that mr. w. h. was _shakespeare_, who _was_ the only begetter of the sonnets, and the proof of this statement will in due time be forthcoming. it may be well to try and read some of the sonnets as they stand and endeavour to realise what is the obvious meaning of the printed words. the key to the sonnets will be found in no. . the language in which it is written is explicit and capable of being understood by any ordinary intellect. "sinne of selfe-love possesseth al mine eie and all my soule, and al my every part; and for this sinne there is no remedie, it is so grounded inward in my heart. me thinkes no face so gratious is as mine, no shape so true, no truth of such account, and for my selfe mine owne worth do define, as i all other in all worth's surmount but when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed beated and chopt with tand antiquitie, mine own selfe love quite contrary i read selfe, so selfe loving were iniquity. tis thee (my-selfe) that for myself i praise painting my age with beauty of thy daies." the writer here states definitely that he is dominated by the sin of self-love; it possesseth his eye, his soul, and every part of him. there can be found no remedy for it; it is so grounded in his heart. no face is so gracious as is his, no shape so true, no truth of such account. he defines his worth as surmounting that of all others. this is the frank expression of a man who not only believed that he was, but knew that he was superior to all his contemporaries, not only in intellectual power, but in personal appearance. then comes an arrest in the thought, and he realises that time has been at work. he has been picturing himself as he was when a young man. he turns to his glass and sees himself beated and chopt with tanned antiquity; forty summers have passed over his brow.[ ] francis bacon at forty years of age, or thereabouts, unmarried, childless, sits down to his table, hilliard's portrait before him, with pen in hand, full of self-love, full of admiration for that beautiful youth on whose counterfeit presentment he is gazing. his intellectual triumphs pass in review before him, most of them known only to himself and that youth--his companion through life. that was the francis bacon who controlled him in all his comings and goings--his ideal whom he worshipped. if he could have a son like that boy! his pen begins to move on the paper-- "from fairest creatures we desire increase that thereby beauty's rose might never die, but as the riper should by time decrease his tender heire might bear his memory." the pen stops and the writer's eye wanders to the miniature:-- "but _thou_[ ] contracted to thine own bright eyes." and so the sonnets flow on, without effort, without the need of reference to authorities, for the great, fixed and methodical memory needs none. how natural are the allusions-- "thou art thy mother's glasse and she in thee calls backe the lovely aprill of her prime." * * * * * "be as thy presence is, gracious and kind, or to thyselfe at least kind hearted prove. make thee another self, for love of me that beauty may still live in thine or thee." * * * * * "let those whom nature hath not made for store, harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish; look, whom she best indow'd she gave the more; which bountious guift thou shouldst in bounty cherrish; she carv'd thee for her seale, and ment therby thou shouldst print more, not let that coppy die." * * * * * "o that you were yourselfe, but love you are no longer yours, then you yourselfe here live, against this cunning end you should prepare, and your sweet semblance to some other give · · · · who lets so faire a house fall to decay · · · · o none but unthrifts, deare my love you know you had a father, let your son say so." * * * * * "but wherefore do not you a mightier waie make warre uppon this bloodie tirant time? and fortifie your selfe in your decay with meanes more blessed, then my barren rime? now stand you on the top of happie houres and many maiden gardens, yet onset, with virtuous wish would beare you living flowers much liker than your painted counterfeit: * * * * * who will beleeve my verses in time to come if it were fil'd with your most high deserts? though yet heaven knows, it is but as a tombe _which hides your life_, and shewes not halfe your parts: if i could write the beauty of your eyes and in fresh numbers number all your graces, the age to come would say this poet lies, such heavenly touches nere toucht earthly faces. so should my papers (yellowed with their age) be scorn'd, like old men of lesse truth than tongue, and your true rights be termd a poets rage and stretched miter of an antique song. but were some childe of yours alive that time, you should live twise, in it and in my rime." * * * * * "yet doe thy worst, ould time, dispight thy wrong my love shall in my verse ever live young." he realises that he no longer answers ophelia's description: "the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword: the expectancy and rose of the fair state the glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers.... that unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth." but he cannot forget what he has been, he cannot realise that he is no longer the brilliant youth whose miniature he has before him, with the words inscribed around, "si tabula daretur digna animum mallem"--if materials could be found worthy to paint his mind ("o could he but have drawn his wit") and then with a burst of poetic enthusiasm he exclaims:-- "tis thee (myselfe) that for myselfe i praise, painting my age with beauty of thy daies." this is the common experience of a man as he advances in life. so long as he does not see his reflection in a glass, if he tries to visualize himself, he sees the youth or young man. only in his most pessimistic moments does he realise his age. there is no longer any difficulty in understanding shakespeare's sonnets. they were addressed by "shakespeare," the poet, to the marvellous youth who was known under the name of francis bacon, and they were written, with hilliard's portrait placed on his table before him. in that age (please god it may be the present age), which is known only to god and to the fates when the finishing touch shall be given to bacon's fame,[ ] it will be found that the period of his life from twelve to thirty-five years of age surpassed all others, not only in brilliant intellectual achievements, but for the enduring wealth with which he endowed his countrymen. and yet it was part of his scheme of life that his connection with the great renaissance in english literature should lie hidden until posterity should recognise that work as the fruit of his brain:--"mente videbor"--"by the mind i shall be seen." how lacking all his modern biographers have been in perception! every difficulty in those which are termed the procreation sonnets disappears with the application of this key. only by it can sonnet be made intelligible:-- "my glass shall not persuade me i am old, as long as youth and thou are of one date; but when in thee time's furrow i behold, then look, i death my days would expirate for all that beauty that doth cover thee is but the steady raiment of my heart. which in my breast doth live, as thine in me. how can i then be older than thou art? o, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary as i, not for myself, but for thee will; bearing thy heart, which i will keep so chary as tender nurse her babe from faring ill. presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; thou gavest me thine, not to give back again." but nearly every sonnet might be quoted in support of this view. especially is it of value in bringing an intelligent and allowable explanation to sonnets , , and , which now no longer have an unsavoury flavour. sonnet no. is most noteworthy, because it implies a belief in re-incarnation. shakespeare expresses his longing to know what the ancients would have said of his marvellous intellect. if he could find his picture in some antique book over years old, see an image of himself as he then was, and learn what men thought of him! "if their bee nothing new, but that which is hath beene before, how are our braines begulld, which laboring for invention, beare amisse the second burthen of a former child? oh that record could with a back-ward looke, even of five hundredth courses of the sunne, show me your image in some antique booke, since minde at first in carrecter was done, that i might see what the old world could say to this composed wonder of your frame; whether we are mended, or where better they, or whether revolution be the same. oh sure i am, the wits of former daies, to subjects worse have given admiring praise." there is the same idea in sonnet , which suggests that in some future re-incarnation bacon might read shakespeare's praises of him. conjectures as to who was the rival poet may be dispensed with. the following rendering of sonnet no. makes this perfectly clear:-- "o how i (_the poet_) faint when i of you (_f.b._) do write, knowing a better spirit (_that of the philosopher_) doth use your name and in the praise thereof spends all his might to make me tongue tied, speaking of your fame! (_shakespeare never refers to bacon or vice-versa_) but since your (_f.b.'s_) worth wide as the ocean is, the humble as the proudest sail doth bear, my saucy bark (_that of the poet_) inferior far to his (_that of the philosopher_), on your broad main doth wilfully appear. your shallowest help will hold me (_the poet_) up afloat whilst he (_the philosopher_) upon your soundless deep doth ride." it is impossible to do justice to this subject in the space here available. by the aid of this key every line becomes intelligible. the charm and beauty of the sonnets are increased tenfold. every unpleasant association of them is removed. no longer need browning say, "if so the less shakespeare he." these are not "shakespeare's sug'rd[ ] sonnets amongst his private friends" to which meres makes reference. they are to be found elsewhere. if there had been an intelligent study of elizabethan literature from original sources the authorship of the sonnets would have been revealed long ago. it was a habit of bacon to speak of himself as some one apart from the speaker. the opening sentence of _filum labyrinthi, sivo forma inquisitiones_ is an example. _ad filios_--"francis bacon thought in this manner." prefixed to the preface to gilbert wats' interpretation of the "advancement of learning" is a chapter commencing, "francis lo verulam consulted thus: and thus concluded with himselfe. the publication whereof he conceived did concern the present and future age." nothing that has been written is more perfectly baconian in style and temperament than are the sonnets. they breathe out his hopes, his aspirations, his ideals, his fears, in every line. he knew he was not for his time. he knew future generations only would render him the fame to which his incomparable powers entitled him. he knew how far he towered above his contemporaries, aye, and his predecessors, in intellectual power. his hopes were fixed on that day in the distant future--to-day--when for the first time the meshes which he wove, behind which his life's work is obscured, are beginning to be unravelled. the most sanguine baconian, in his most enthusiastic moments, must fail adequately to appreciate the achievements of francis bacon and the obligations under which he has placed posterity. but bacon knew--and he alone knew--their full value. it was fitting that the greatest poet which the world had produced should in matchless verse do honour to the world's greatest intellect. it was a pretty conceit. only a master mind would dare to make the attempt. the result has afforded another example of how his great wit, in being concealed, was revealed. footnotes: [ ] sonnet no. . [ ] _'tis thee myselfe_, sonnet . [ ] see rawley's introduction to "manes verulamiana." [ ] the expression "sugr'd sonnets" refers to verses which were written with coloured ink to which sugar had been added. when dry the writing shone brightly. chapter xxi. bacon's library. in the "advancement of learning" bacon refers to the annotations of books as being deficient. there was living at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century a scholar through whose hands at least several thousand books passed. he appears to have made a practice of annotating in the margins every book he read. the chief purpose, however, of the notes, apparently, was to aid the memory, for in some books nearly every name occurring in the text is carried into the margin without comment. the notes are also accompanied by scrolls, marks, and brackets, which support the contention that they are the work of one man. the annotation of books was not a common practice then, nor has it been since. if a reader takes up a hundred books in a second-hand book shop he will probably not find more than one containing manuscript notes, and not one in five hundred in which the annotations have been systematically carried through. there does not appear to have been any other scholar living at that time, with the exception of this one, who was persistently making marginal notes on the books he read. spedding writes: "what became of his (bacon's) books, which were left to sir john constable and must have contained traces of his reading, we do not know; but very few appear to have survived." mrs. pott, in "francis bacon and his secret society," draws attention to the mystery as to the disappearance of bacon's library. "which is a mystery," she adds, "although the world has been content to take it very apathetically. where is bacon's library? undoubtedly the books exist and are traceable. we should expect them to be recognisable by marginal notes; yet those notes, whether in pencil or in ink, may have been effaced. if annotated, bacon and his friends would not wish his books to attract public attention." and further on: "it is probable that the latter (_i.e._, the books) will seldom or never be found to bear his name or signature." and again: "yet it may reasonably be anticipated that some at least are 'noted in the margin,' or that some will be found with traces of marks which were guides to the transcriber or amanuensis as to the portions which were to be copied for future use in bacon's collections or book of commonplaces." mrs. pott's words were written in a spirit of true prophecy. the collecting together of these books originated with that distinguished baconian scholar, mr. w. m. safford. for years past he has been steadily engaged in reconstituting bacon's library. the writer has had the privilege of being associated with him in this work during the past three years. a collection of nearly two thousand volumes has been gathered together. the annotations on the margins of these books are unquestionably the work of one man, and that man, or rather boy and man, was undoubtedly francis bacon. the books bear date from to . it is impossible to enumerate them all here, but they include the works of seneca, aristotle, plato, horace, alciat, lucanus, dionysius, catullus, lactinius, plutarch, pliny, aristophanes, plautus, cornelius agrippa, cicero, vitruvius, euclid, virgil, ovid, lucretius, apuleius, salust, tibullus, isocrates, and hundreds of other classical writers; st. augustine, st. jerome, calvin, beza, beda, erasmus, martin luther, j. cammerarius, sir thomas moore, machiavelli, and other more modern writers. the handwriting varies,[ ] but there is a particular hand which is found accompanied by a boy's sketches. there are drawings of full-length figures, heads of men and women, animals, birds, reptiles, ships, castles, cathedrals, cities, battles, storms, etc. the writing is a strong, clerkly student's hand. there is a passage in "hamlet," act v., scene ii., which is noteworthy. hamlet, speaking to horatio, says:-- "i sat me down devised a new commission; wrote it fair; i once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair, and labour'd much how to forget that learning; but, sir, now it did me yeomans service." the nature of this statement is so personal that it could only have been written as the result of experience. hamlet had been taught, when young, to write a hand so fair that he was capable of producing a fresh commission which would pass muster as the work of a court copyist. the annotation of these books possessed the same qualification. in the margins of these books are abundant references in handwriting to the whole range of classical authors. a copy of the "grammatice compendium" of lactus pomponius, a very rare book printed by de fortis in venice in , contains on the margins the boy's scribble and drawings, besides a number of manuscript notes. it bears traces of his reading probably at eight years of age. a large folio volume entitled "t. livii palvini latinæ historiæ principis decades tres," published by frobenius in , is a treasure. it is most copiously annotated and embellished with sketches. the notes are usually in latin, but interspersed with greek and sometimes with english. obviously the writer thought in latin, and the character of the drawings justifies the assumption that, at the time, his age would be from ten to fourteen years. the most remarkable reference to these annotations is to be found in the "rape of lucrece." the fifteenth stanza is as follows:-- "but she that never cop't with straunger eies, could picke no meaning from their parling lookes, _nor read the subtle shining secrecies writ in the glassie margents of such bookes_, shee toucht no unknown baits, nor feared no hooks, nor could shee moralize his wanton sight more than his eies were opend to the light." it would be difficult to conceive a more inappropriate simile for the lustful looks in tarquin's eyes than "the subtle shining secrecies, writ in the glassie margents of such books." that this is lugged in for a purpose outside the object of the poem is manifest. how many readers of "lucrece" would know of such a practice? nay. if it did exist, was not its use very rare? but the margin of the verse itself yields a subtle shining secret! the initial letters of the lines are b, c, n, w, sh, n, m. it is only necessary to supply the vowels--bacon, w. sh., name. sh is on line , which is the numerical value of the word shakespeare. the numerical value of bacon is . in view of this the line is significant:--"why is colatine the publisher?" the use of the word _publisher_ here is quite inappropriate. it is introduced for some reason outside the purpose of the text. the "rape of lucrece" commences with bacon's monogram and, as the late rev. walter begley pointed out, ends with his signature. the theory now advanced is that when bacon read a book he made marginal notes in it--the object being mainly to assist his memory, but the critical notes are numerous. it does not follow that all these books constituted his library. he would read a book and it having served his purpose he would dispose of it. some books no doubt he would retain and these would form his library. the annotations are chiefly in latin, but some are in greek, some in hebrew, french and spanish. when these have been examined and translated the meaning of the phrase that he had taken all knowledge to be his province will be better understood. rawley says: "he read much and that with great judgment and rejection of impertinences incident to many authors." the writer having examined annotations, many and varied, of books in his library, and having enjoyed the privilege of free access to those collected by mr. safford, ventures to assert that much of the ripe learning of the shakespeare plays can be traced therein to its proper origin. amongst the former is a copy of alciat's emblems, , in the early part profusely annotated. ben jonson in his "discoveries" has incorporated the translation of a portion of one of the emblems and _has also incorporated a portion of the annotations from this very book_. footnotes: [ ] edwin a. abbot, in his work, "francis bacon," p. , writes, "bacon's style (as a writer) varied almost as much as his handwriting." chapter xxii. two german opinions on shakespeare and bacon. dr. g. g. gervinus, the eminent german historian and professor extraordinary at heidelberg, published in his work, "shakespeare commentaries." this was years before any suggestion had been made that bacon was in any way connected with the authorship of the shakespearean dramas. in the prospectus of "the new shakespeare society," written in , dr. f. j. furnivall says:-- "the profound and generous 'commentaries' of gervinus--an honour to a german to have written, a pleasure to an englishman to read--is still the only book known to me that comes near the true treatment and the dignity of its subject, or can be put into the hands of the student who wants to know the mind of shakespeare." the book abounds with references to bacon. from the preface to the last chapter gervinus appears to have bacon continually suggested to him by the thoughts and words of shakespeare. in the preface, after speaking of the value accruing to german literature by naturalizing shakespeare "even at the risk of casting our own poets still further in the shade," he says:-- "a similar benefit would it be to our intellectual life if his famed contemporary, bacon, were revived in a suitable manner, in order to counterbalance the idealistic philosophy of germany. for both these, the poet as well as the philosopher, having looked deeply into the history and politics of their people, stand upon the level ground of reality, notwithstanding the high art of the one and the speculative notions of the other. by the healthfulness of their own mind they influence the healthfulness of others, while in their most ideal and most abstract representations they aim at a preparation for life _as it is_--for _that_ life which forms the exclusive subject of all political action." in the chapter on "his age," written prior to , the professor pours out the results of a profound study of the writings attributed to both men in the following remarkable sentences:-- "judge then how natural it was that england, if not the birthplace of the drama, should be that of dramatic legislature. yet even this instance of favourable concentration is not the last. both in philosophy and poetry everything conspired, as it were, throughout this prosperous period, in favour of two great minds, shakespeare and bacon; all competitors vanished from their side, and they could give forth laws for art and science which it is incumbent even upon present ages to fulfil. as the revived philosophy, which in the former century in germany was divided among many, but in england at that time was the possession of a single man, so poetry also found one exclusive heir, compared with whom those later born could claim but little. "that shakespeare's appearance upon a soil so admirably prepared was neither marvellous nor accidental is evidenced even by the corresponding appearance of such a contemporary as bacon. scarcely can anything be said of shakespeare's position generally with regard to mediæval poetry which does not also bear upon the position of the renovator bacon with regard to mediæval philosophy. neither knew nor mentioned the other, although bacon was almost called upon to have done so in his remarks upon the theatre of his day. it may be presumed that shakespeare liked bacon but little, if he knew his writings and life; that he liked not his ostentation, which, without on the whole interfering with his modesty, recurred too often in many instances; that he liked not the fault-finding which his ill-health might have caused, nor the narrow-mindedness with which he pronounced the histrionic art to be infamous, although he allowed that the ancients regarded the drama as a school for virtue; nor the theoretic precepts of worldly wisdom which he gave forth; nor, lastly, the practical career which he lived. before his mind, however, if he had fathomed it, he must have bent in reverence. for just as shakespeare was an interpreter of the secrets of history and of human nature, bacon was an interpreter of lifeless nature. just as shakespeare went from instance to instance in his judgment of moral actions, and never founded a law on single experience, so did bacon in natural science avoid leaping from one experience of the senses to general principles; he spoke of this with blame as anticipating nature; and shakespeare, in the same way, would have called the conventionalities in the poetry of the southern races an anticipation of human nature. in the scholastic science of the middle ages, as in the chivalric poetry of the romantic period, approbation and not truth was sought for, and with one accord shakespeare's poetry and bacon's science were equally opposed to this. as shakespeare balanced the one-sided errors of the imagination by reason, reality, and nature, so bacon led philosophy away from the one-sided errors of reason to experience; both with one stroke, renovated the two branches of science and poetry by this renewed bond with nature; both, disregarding all by-ways, staked everything upon this 'victory in the race between art and nature.' just as bacon with his new philosophy is linked with the natural science of greece and rome, and then with the latter period of philosophy in western europe, so shakespeare's drama stands in relation to the comedies of plautus and to the stage of his own day; between the two there lay a vast wilderness of time, as unfruitful for the drama as for philosophy. but while they thus led back to nature, bacon was yet as little of an empiric, in the common sense, as shakespeare was a poet of nature. bacon prophesied that if hereafter his commendation of experience should prevail, great danger to science would arise from the other extreme, and shakespeare even in his own day could perceive the same with respect to his poetry; bacon, therefore, insisted on the closest union between experience and reason, just as shakespeare effected that between reality and imagination. while they thus bid adieu to the formalities of ancient art and science, shakespeare to conceits and taffeta-phrases, bacon to logic and syllogisms, yet at times it occurred that the one fell back into the subtleties of the old school, and the other into the constrained wit of the italian style. bacon felt himself quite an original in that which was his peculiar merit, and so was shakespeare; the one in the method of science he had laid down, and in his suggestions for its execution, the other in the poetical works he had executed, and in the suggestions of their new law. bacon, looking back to the waymarks he had left for others, said with pride that his words required a century for their demonstration and several for their execution; and so too it has demanded two centuries to understand shakespeare, but very little has ever been executed in his sense. and at the same time we have mentioned what deep modesty was interwoven in both with their self-reliance, so that the words which bacon liked to quote hold good for the two works:--'the kingdom of god cometh not with observation.' both reached this height from the one starting point, that shakespeare despised the million, and bacon feared with phocion the applause of the multitude. both are alike in the rare impartiality with which they avoided everything one-sided; in bacon we find, indeed, youthful exercises in which he endeavoured in severe contrasts to contemplate a series of things from two points of view. both, therefore, have an equal hatred of sects and parties; bacon of sophists and dogmatic philosophers, shakespeare of puritans and zealots. both, therefore, are equally free from prejudices, and from astrological superstition in dreams and omens. bacon says of the alchemists and magicians in natural science that they stand in similar relation to true knowledge as the deeds of amadis to those of cæsar, and so does shakespeare's true poetry stand in relation to the fantastic romance of amadis. just as bacon banished religion from science, so did shakespeare from art; and when the former complained that the teachers of religion were against natural philosophy, they were equally against the stage. from bacon's example it seems clear that shakespeare left religious matters unnoticed on the same grounds as himself, and took the path of morality in worldly things; in both this has been equally misconstrued, and le maistre has proved bacon's lack of christianity, as birch has done that of shakespeare. shakespeare would, perhaps, have looked down just as contemptuously on the ancients and their arts as bacon did on their philosophy and natural science, and both on the same grounds; they boasted of the greater age of the world, of more enlarged knowledge of heaven, earth, and mankind. neither stooped before authorities, and an injustice similar to that which bacon committed against aristotle, shakespeare _perhaps_ has done to homer. in both a similar combination of different mental powers was at work; and as shakespeare was often involuntarily philosophical in his profoundness, bacon was not seldom surprised into the imagination of the poet. just as bacon, although he declared knowledge in itself to be much more valuable than the use of invention, insisted throughout generally and dispassionately upon the practical use of philosophy, so shakespeare's poetry, independent as was his sense of art, aimed throughout at bearing upon the moral life. bacon himself was of the same opinion; he was not far from declaring history to be the best teacher of politics, and poetry the best instructor in morals. both were alike deeply moved by the picture of a ruling nemesis, whom they saw, grand and powerful, striding through history and life, dragging the mightiest and most prosperous as a sacrifice to her altar, as the victims of their own inward nature and destiny. in bacon's works we find a multitude of moral sayings and maxims of experience, from which the most striking mottoes might be drawn for every shakespearian play, aye, for every one of his principal characters (we have already brought forward not a few proofs of this), testifying to a remarkable harmony in their mutual comprehension of human nature. both, in their systems of morality rendering homage to aristotle, whose ethics shakespeare, from a passage in troilus, may have read, arrived at the same end as he did--that virtue lies in a just medium between two extremes. shakespeare would also have agreed with _him_ in this, that bacon declared excess to be 'the fault of youth, as defect is of age;' he accounted 'defect the worst, because excess contains some sparks of magnanimity, and, like a bird, claims kindred of the heavens, while defect, only like a base worm, crawls upon the earth.' in these maxims lie at once, as it were, the whole theory of shakespeare's dramatic forms and of his moral philosophy." dr. kuno fischer, the distinguished german critic and historian of philosophy, in a volume on bacon, published in , writes:-- the same affinity for the roman mind, and the same want of sympathy with the greek, we again find in bacon's greatest contemporary, whose imagination took as broad and comprehensive a view as bacon's intellect. indeed, how could a bacon attain that position with respect to greek poetry that was unattainable by the mighty imagination of a shakspeare? for in shakspeare, at any rate, the imagination of the greek antiquity could be met by a homogeneous power of the same rank as itself; and, as the old adage says, "like comes to like." but the age, the spirit of the nation--in a word, all those forces of which the genius of an individual man is composed, and which, moreover, genius is least able to resist--had here placed an obstacle, impenetrable both to the poet and the philosopher. shakspeare was no more able to exhibit greek characters than bacon to expound greek poetry. like bacon, shakspeare had in his turn of mind something that was roman, and not at all akin to the greek. he could appropriate to himself a coriolanus and a brutus, a cæsar and an antony; he could succeed with the roman heroes of plutarch, but not with the greek heroes of homer. the latter he could only parody, but his parody was as infelicitous as bacon's explanation of the "wisdom of the ancients." those must be dazzled critics indeed who can persuade themselves that the heroes of the iliad are excelled by the caricatures in "troilus and cressida." the success of such a parody was poetically impossible; indeed, he that attempts to parody homer shows thereby that he has not understood him. for the simple and the naïve do not admit of a parody, and these have found in homer their eternal and inimitable expression. just as well might caricatures be made of the statues of phidias. where the creative imagination never ceases to be simple and naïve, where it never distorts itself by the affected or the unnatural, there is the consecrated land of poetry, in which there is no place for the parodist. on the other hand, where there is a palpable want of simplicity and nature, parody is perfectly conceivable; nay, may even be felt as a poetical necessity. thus euripides, who, often enough, was neither simple nor naïve, could be parodied, and aristophanes has shown us with what felicity. even Ã�schylus, who was not always as simple as he was grand, does not completely escape the parodising test. but homer is safe. to parody homer is to mistake him, and to stand so far beyond his scope that the truth and magic of his poetry can no longer be felt; and this is the position of shakespeare and bacon. the imagination of homer, and all that could be contemplated and felt by that imagination, namely, the classical antiquity of the greeks, are to them utterly foreign. we cannot understand aristotle without plato; nay, i maintain that we cannot contemplate with a sympathetic mind the platonic world of ideas, if we have not previously sympathised with the world of the homeric gods. be it understood, i speak of the _form_ of the platonic mind, not of its logical matter; in point of doctrine, the homeric faith was no more that of plato than of phidias. but these doctrinal or logical differences are far less than the formal and æsthetical affinity. the conceptions of plato are of homeric origin. this want of ability to take an historical survey of the world is to be found alike in bacon and shakspeare, together with many excellencies likewise common to them both. to the parallel between them--which gervinus, with his peculiar talent for combination, has drawn in the concluding remarks to his "shakespeare," and has illustrated by a series of appropriate instances--belongs the similar relation of both to antiquity, their affinity to the roman mind, and their diversity from the greek. both possessed to an eminent degree that faculty for a knowledge of human nature that at once pre-supposes and calls forth an interest in practical life and historical reality. to this interest corresponds the stage, on which the roman characters moved; and here bacon and shakspeare met, brought together by a common interest in these objects, and the attempt to depict and copy them. this point of agreement, more than any other argument, explains their affinity. at the same time there is no evidence that one ever came into actual contact with the other. bacon does not even mention shakspeare when he discourses of dramatic poetry, but passes over this department of poetry with a general and superficial remark that relates less to the subject itself than to the stage and its uses. as far as his own age is concerned, he sets down the moral value of the stage as exceedingly trifling. but the affinity of bacon to shakspeare is to be sought in his moral and psychological, not in his æsthetical views, which are too much regulated by material interests and utilitarian prepossessions to be applicable to art itself, considered with reference to its own independent value. however, even in these there is nothing to prevent bacon's manner of judging mankind, and apprehending characters from agreeing perfectly with that of shakspeare; so that human life, the subject-matter of all dramatic art, appeared to him much as it appeared to the great artist himself, who, in giving form to this matter, excelled all others. is not the inexhaustible theme of shakspeare's poetry the history and course of human passion? in the treatment of this especial theme is not shakspeare the greatest of all poets--nay, is he not unique among them all? and it is this very theme that is proposed by bacon as the chief problem of moral philosophy. he blames aristotle for treating of the passions in his rhetoric rather than his ethics; for regarding the artificial means of exciting them rather than their natural history. it is to the natural history of the human passions that bacon directs the attention of philosophy. he does not find any knowledge of them among the sciences of his time. "the poets and writers of histories," he says, "are the best doctors of this knowledge; where we may find painted forth with great life how passions are kindled and incited; and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary; how they gather and fortify; how they are inwrapped one within another; and how they do fight and encounter one with another; and other the like particularities."[ ] such a lively description is required by bacon from moral philosophy. that is to say, he desired nothing less than a natural history of the passions--the very thing that shakspeare has produced. indeed, what poet could have excelled shakspeare in this respect? who, to use a baconian expression, could have depicted man and all his passions more _ad vivum_? according to bacon, the poets and historians give us copies of characters; and the outlines of these images--the simple strokes that determine characters--are the proper objects of ethical science. just as physical science requires a dissection of bodies, that their hidden qualities and parts may be discovered, so should ethics penetrate the various minds of men, in order to find out the eternal basis of them all. and not only this foundation, but likewise those external conditions which give a stamp to human character--all those peculiarities that "are imposed upon the mind by the sex, by the age, by the region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity, and the like, which are inherent and not external; and, again, those which are caused by external fortune"[ ]--should come within the scope of ethical philosophy. in a word, bacon would have man studied in his individuality as a product of nature and history, in every respect determined by natural and historical influences, by internal and external conditions. and exactly in the same spirit has shakespeare understood man and his destiny; regarding character as the result of a certain natural temperament and a certain historical position, and destiny as a result of character. footnotes: [ ] "advancement of learning," ii. "de augment. scient.," vii. . [ ] "advancement of learning," ii. for the whole passage compare "de augment. scient.," vii. . chapter xxiii. the testimony of bacon's contemporaries. a distinguished member of the bench in a recent post-prandial address referred to bacon as "a shady lawyer." irresponsible newspaper correspondents, when attacking the baconian theory, indulge in epithets of this kind, but it is amazing that any man occupying a position so responsible as that of an english judge should, either through ignorance or with a desire to be considered a wit, make use of such a term. whatever may have been francis bacon's faults, one fact must stand unchallenged--that amongst those of his contemporaries who knew him there was a consensus of opinion that his virtues overshadowed any failings to which he might be subject. the following testimonies establish this fact:-- let ben jonson speak first: "yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. his language (where he could spare or pass a jest) was nobly censorious. no man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. no member of his speech, but consisted of his own graces. his hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. he commanded where he spoke; and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. no man had their affections more in his power. the fear of every man that heard him was, lest he should make an end," and, after referring to lord ellesmere, jonson continues:-- "but his learned and able (though unfortunate) successor, (_i.e._, bacon) is he who hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred either to insolent greece, or haughty rome. in short, within his view, and about his times, were all the wits born, that could honour a language, or help study. now things daily fall, wits grow downward, and eloquence grows backward: so that he may be named, and stand as the mark and [greek: akôê] of our language. "my conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place, or honours: but i have and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. in his adversity i ever prayed god would give him strength; for greatness he could not want. neither could i condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest." sir toby matthew describes francis bacon as "a friend unalterable to his friends; a man most sweet in his conversation and ways"; and adds: "it is not his greatness that i admire, but his virtue." thomas bushel, his servant, in a letter to mr. john eliot, printed in , in a volume called "the first part of youth's errors," says: "yet lest the calumnious tongues of men might extenuate the good opinion you had of his worth and merit, i must ingenuously confess that my selfe and others of his servants were the occasion of exhaling his vertues into a darke exlipse; which god knowes would have long endured both for the honour of his king and the good of the commonaltie; had not we whom his bountie nursed, laid on his guiltlesse shoulders our base and execrable deeds to be scand and censured by the whole senate of a state, where no sooner sentence was given, but most of us forsoke him, which makes us bear the badge of jewes to this day. yet i am confident there were some godly daniels amongst us.... as for myselfe, with shame i must acquit the title, and pleade guilty; which grieves my very soule, that so matchlesse a peer should be lost by such insinuating caterpillars, who in his owne nature scorn'd the least thought of any base, unworthy, or ignoble act, though subject to infirmites as ordained to the wisest." in fuller's "worthies" it is written: "he was a rich cabinet filled with judgment, wit, fancy and memory, and had the golden key, elocution, to open it. he was singular in singulis, in every science and art, and being in-at-all came off with credit. he was too bountifull to his servants, and either too confident of their honesty, or too conniving at their falsehood. 'tis said he had servants, one in all causes patron to the plaintiff, the other to the defendant, but taking bribes of both, with this condition, to restore the mony received, if the cause went against them. such practices, tho' unknown to their master, cost him the loss of his office." in "the lives of statesmen and favourites of elizabeth's reign" it is said:-- "his religion was rational and sober, his spirit publick, his love to relations tender, to friends faithful, to the hopeful liberal, to men universal, to his very enemies civil. he left the best pattern of government in his actions under one king and the best principles of it in the life of the other." the following is a translation from the discourse on the life of mr. francis bacon which is prefixed to the "histoire naturelle," by piere amboise, published in paris in : "among so many virtues that made this great man commendable, prudence, as the first of all the moral virtues, and that most necessary to those of his profession, was that which shone in him the most brightly. his profound wisdom can be most readily seen in his books, and his matchless fidelity in the signal services that he continuously rendered to his prince. never was there man who so loved equity, or so enthusiastically worked for the public good as he; so that i may aver that he would have been much better suited to a republic than to a monarchy, where frequently the convenience of the prince is more thought of than that of his people. and i do not doubt that had he lived in a republic he would have acquired as much glory from the citizens as formerly did aristides and cato, the one in athens, the other in rome. innocence oppressed found always in his protection a sure refuge, and the position of the great gave them no vantage ground before the chancellor when suing for justice. "vanity, avarice, and ambition, vices that too often attach themselves to great honours, were to him quite unknown, and if he did a good action it was not from the desire of fame, but simply because he could not do otherwise. his good qualities were entirely pure, without being clouded by the admixture of any imperfections, and the passions that form usually the defects in great men in him only served to bring out his virtues; if he felt hatred and rage it was only against evil-doers, to shew his detestation of their crimes, and success or failure in the affairs of his country brought to him the greater part of his joys or his sorrows. he was as truly a good man as he was an upright judge, and by the example of his life corrected vice and bad living as much as by pains and penalties. and, in a word, it seemed that nature had exempted from the ordinary frailities of men him whom she had marked out to deal with their crimes. all these good qualities made him the darling of the people and prized by the great ones of the state. but when it seemed that nothing could destroy his position, fortune made clear that she did not yet wish to abandon her character for instability, and that bacon had too much worth to remain so long prosperous. it thus came about that amongst the great number of officials such as a man of his position must have in his house, there was one who was accused before parliament of exaction, and of having sold the influence that he might have with his master. and though the probity of mr. bacon was entirely exempt from censure, nevertheless he was declared guilty of the crime of his servant and was deprived of the power that he had so long exercised with so much honour and glory. in this i see the working of monstrous ingratitude and unparalleled cruelty--to say that a man who could mark the years of his life rather by the signal services that he had rendered to the state than by times or seasons, should have received such hard usage for the punishment of a crime which he never committed; england, indeed, teaches us by this that the sea that surrounds her shores imparts to her inhabitants somewhat of its restless inconstancy. this storm did not at all surprise him, and he received the news of his disgrace with a countenance so undisturbed that it was easy to see that he thought but little of the sweets of life since the loss of them caused him discomfort so slight." thus ended this great man whom england could place alone as the equal of the best of all the previous centuries." peter boener, who was private apothecary to bacon for a time, wrote in a life, of portions of which the following are translations:-- "but how runneth man's future. he who seemed to occupy the highest rank is alas! by envious tongues near king and parliament deposed from all his offices and chancellorship, little considering what treasure was being cast in the mire, as afterwards the issue and result thereof have shown in that country. but he always comforted himself with the words of scripture--nihil est novi; that means 'there is nothing new.' because so is cicero by octavianus; calisthenes by alexander; seneca (all his former teachers) by nero; yea, ovid, lucanus, statius (together with many others), for a small cause very unthankfully the one banished, the other killed, the third thrown to the lions. but even as for such men banishment is freedom--death their life, so is for this author his deposition a memory to greater honour and fame, and to such a sage no harm can come. * * * * * "whilst his fortunes were so changed, i never saw him--either in mien, word or acts--changed or disturbed towards whomsoever; _ira enim hominis non implet justitiam dei_, he was ever one and the same, both in sorrow and in joy, as becometh a philosopher; always with a benevolent allocution--_manus nostræ sunt oculatæ, credunt quod vident_.... a noteworthy example and pattern for everyone of all virtue, gentleness, peacefulness, and patience." francis osborn, in his "advice to a son," writes:-- "and my memory neither doth nor (i believe possible ever) can direct me towards an example more splendid in this kind, than the lord bacon earl of st. albans, who in all companies did appear a good proficient, if not a master in those arts entertained for the subject of every ones discourse. so as i dare maintain, without the least affectation of flattery or hyperbole, that his most casual talk deserveth to be written, as i have been told his first or foulest copys required no great labour to render them competent for the nicest judgments. a high perfection, attainable only by use, and treating with every man in his respective profession, and what he was most vers'd in. so as i have heard him entertain a country lord in the proper terms relating to hawks and dogs. and at another time out-cant a london chirurgeon. thus he did not only learn himself, but gratifie such as taught him; who looked upon their callings as honoured through his notice; nor did an easie falling into arguments (not unjustly taken for a blemish in the most) appear less than an ornament in him: the ears of the hearers receiving more gratification, than trouble; and (so) no less sorry when he came to conclude, than displeased with any did interrupt him. now this general knowledge he had in all things, husbanded by his wit, and dignifi'd by so majestical a carriage he was known to own, strook such an awful reverence in those he question'd, that they durst not conceal the most intrinsick part of their mysteries from him, for fear of appearing ignorant, or saucy. all which rendered him no less necessary, than admirable at the council table, where in reference to impositions, monopolies, &c. the meanest manufacturers were an usual argument: and, as i have heard, did in this baffle, the earl of middlesex, that was born and bred a citizen &c. yet without any great (if at all) interrupting his other studies, as is not hard to be imagined of a quick apprehension, in which he was admirable." chapter xxiv. the missing fourth part of "the great instauration." it has been urged by critics that bacon, whilst professing to take all knowledge for his province, ignored one-half of it--that half which was a knowledge of himself; that to him the external world was everything, the internal nothing. all that nature revealed was external; nothing that was internal was of much importance. it must be remembered that all that we have of bacon's was written as he was passing into the "vale of life." of his early productions nothing has come down to the present times under his own name. the following extracts from his acknowledged works establish two facts:--( ) that the foregoing criticism is unfounded, for he placed the study of man's mind and character above all other enquiries. ( ) that he had prepared examples, being "actual types and models, by which the entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of invention from the beginning to the end in certain subjects and those various and remarkable should be set, as it were, before the eyes." where are these works to be found? bacon never tires of quoting from the roman poet the line-- "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci," which, in an elizabethan handwriting, may be seen in a contemporary volume thus rendered-- "he of all others fittest is to write which with some profit allso ioynes delight." he repeats in different forms, until the reiteration becomes almost tedious, the following incident:-- "and as alexander borgia was wont to say, of the expedition of the french for naples, that they came with chalk in their hands to marke up their lodgings not with weapons to fight; so we like better, that entry of truth, which comes peaceably where the mindes of men, capable to lodge so great a guest, are signed, as it were, with chalke; than that which comes with pugnacity, and forceth itselfe a way by contentions and controversies." the same idea is embodied in the following example of the antitheta:-- "a witty conceit is oftentimes a convoy of a truth which otherwise could not so handsomely have been ferried over." in the "advancement of learning," lib. ii., again the same view is insisted on:-- "besides in all wise humane government, they that sit at the helme, doe more happily bring their purposes about, and insinuate more easily things fit for the people, by pretexts, and oblique courses; than by downe-right dealing. nay (which perchance may seem very strange) in things meerely naturall, you may sooner deceive nature, than force her; so improper, and selfe impeaching are open direct proceedings; whereas on the other side, an oblique and an insinuing way, gently glides along and compasseth the intended effect." one other fact must be realised before the full import of the quotations about to be made can be appreciated. in the "distributio operis" prefixed to the "novum organum" the following significant passage occurs[ ]:-- "for as often as i have occasion to report anything as deficient, the nature of which is at all obscure, so that men may not perhaps easily understand what i mean or what the work is which i have in my head, i shall always (provided it be a matter of any worth) take care to subjoin either directions for the execution of such work, or else a portion of the work itself executed by myself as a sample of the whole: thus giving assistance in every case either by work or by counsel." in the "advancement of learning," book ii., chap. i., it is written: "that is the truest partition of humane learning, which hath reference to the three faculties of man's soule, which is the feat of learning. history is referred to memory, poesy to the imagination, philosophy to reason. by poesy, in this place, we understand nothing else, but feigned history, or fables. as for verse, that is only a style of expression, and pertaines to the art of elocution, of which in due place." "poesy, in that sense we have expounded it, is likewise of individuals, fancied to the similitude of those things which in true history are recorded, yet so as often it exceeds measure; and those things which in nature would never meet, nor come to passe, poesy composeth and introduceth at pleasure, even as painting doth: which indeed is the work of the imagination." and in the same book, chapter xiii.:-- "drammaticall, or representative poesy, which brings the world upon the stage, is of excellent use, if it were not abused. for the instructions, and corruptions, of the stage, may be great; but the corruptions in this kind abound, the discipline is altogether neglected in our times. for although in moderne commonwealths, stage-plaies be but estimed a sport or pastime, unlesse it draw from the satyre, and be mordant; yet the care of the ancients was, that it should instruct the minds of men unto virtue. nay, wise men and great philosophers, have accounted it, as the archet, or musicall bow of the mind. and certainly it is most true, and as it were, a secret of nature, that the minds of men are more patent to affections, and impressions, congregate, than solitary." the third chapter of book vii. of the "de augmentis" is devoted to emphasising the importance of a knowledge of the internal working of the mind and of the disposition and character of men. the following extracts are of special moment:-- "some are naturally formed for contemplation, others for business, others for war, others for advancement of fortune, others for love, others for the arts, others for a varied kind of life; so among the poets (heroic, satiric, tragic, comic) are everywhere interspersed, representations of characters, though generally exaggerated and surpassing the truth. and this argument touching the different characters of dispositions is one of those subjects in which the common discourse of men (as sometimes, though very rarely, happens) is wiser than books." the drama as the only vehicle through which this can be accomplished at once suggests itself to the reader. but in order to emphasize this point he proceeds-- "but far the best provision and material for this treatise is to be gained from the wiser sort of historians, not only from the commemorations which they commonly add on recording the deaths of illustrious persons, but much more from the entire body of history as often as such a person enters upon the stage." bacon becomes still more explicit. he continues:-- "wherefore out of these materials (which are surely rich and abundant) let a full and careful treatise be constructed. not, however, that i would have their characters presented in ethics (as we find them in history, or poetry, or even in common discourse) in the shape of complete individual portraits, but rather the several features and simple lineaments of which they are composed, and by the various combinations and arrangements of which all characters whatever are made up, showing how many, and of what nature these are, and how connected and subordinated one to another; that so we may have a scientific and accurate dissection of minds and characters, and the secret dispositions of particular men may be revealed; and that from a knowledge thereof better rules may be framed for the treatment of the mind. and not only should the characters of dispositions which are impressed by nature be received into this treatise, but those also which are imposed upon the mind by sex, by age, by region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity and the like; and again, those which are caused by fortune, as sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy, privateness, prosperity, adversity and the like." shortly after follows this remarkable pronouncement. "but to speak the truth the poets and writers of history are the best doctors of this knowledge,[ ] where we may find painted forth with great life and dissected, how affections are kindled and excited, and how pacified and restrained, and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves, though repressed and concealed; how they work; how they vary; how they are enwrapped one within another; how they fight and encounter one with another; and many more particulars of this kind; amongst which this last is of special use in moral and civil matters; how, i say, to set affection against affection, and to use the aid of one to master another; like hunters and fowlers who use to hunt beast with beast, and catch bird with bird, which otherwise perhaps without their aid man of himself could not so easily contrive; upon which foundation is erected that excellent and general use in civil government of reward and punishment, whereon commonwealths lean; seeing these predominant affections of fear and hope suppress and bridle all the rest. for as in the government of states it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so is it in the internal government of the mind." in his "distributio operis" bacon thus describes the missing fourth part of his "instauratio magna":-- "of these the first is to set forth examples of inquiry and invention[ ] according to my method exhibited by anticipation in some particular subjects; choosing such subjects as are at once the most noble in themselves among those under enquiry, and most different one from another, that there may be an example in every kind. i do not speak of these precepts and rules by way of illustration (for of these i have given plenty in the second part of the work); but i mean actual types and models, by which the entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of invention from the beginning to the end in certain subjects, and those various and remarkable, should be set as it were before the eyes. for i remember that in the mathematics it is easy to follow the demonstration when you have a machine beside you, whereas, without that help, all appears involved and more subtle than it really is. to examples of this kind--being, in fact, nothing more than an application of the second part in detail and at large--the fourth part of the work is devoted." the late mr. edwin reed has, in his "francis bacon our shakespeare," page , drawn attention to a remarkable circumstance. in bacon had written his "cogitata et visa," which was the forerunner of his "novum organum." it was not published until twenty-seven years after his death, namely, in , by isaac gruter, at leyden. in mr. spedding found a manuscript copy of the "cogitata" in the library of queen's college at oxford. this manuscript had been corrected in bacon's own handwriting. it contained passages which were omitted from gruter's print. spedding did not realise the importance of the omitted passages, but mr. edwin reed has made this manifest. the following extract is specially noteworthy, the portion printed in italics having been omitted by gruter:-- "... so he thought best, after long considering the subject and weighing it carefully, first of all to prepare _tabulæ inveniendi_ or regular forms of inquiry; in other words, a mass of particulars arranged for the understanding, and to serve, as it were, for an example and almost visible representation of the matter. for nothing else can be devised that would place in a clearer light what is true and what is false, or show more plainly that what is presented is more than words, and must be avoided by anyone who either has no confidence in his own scheme or may wish to have his scheme taken for more than it is worth. "_but when these tabulæ inveniendi have been put forth and seen, he does not doubt that the more timid wits will shrink almost in despair from imitating them with similar productions with other materials or on other subjects; and they will take so much delight in the specimen given that they will miss the precepts in it. still, many persons will be led to inquire into the real meaning and highest use of these writings, and to find the key to their interpretation, and thus more ardently desire, in some degree at least, to acquire the new aspect of nature which such a key will reveal. but he intends, yielding neither to his own personal aspirations nor to the wishes of others, but keeping steadily in view the success of his undertaking, having shared these writings with some, to withhold the rest until the treatise intended for the people shall be published._" now what conclusions may be drawn from the foregoing extracts? bacon attached the greatest importance to the consideration of the internal life of man. he affirms that dramaticall or representative poesy, which brings the world upon the stage, is of excellent use if it be not abused. the discipline of the stage was neglected in his time, but the care of the ancients was that it should instruct the minds of men unto virtue, and wise men and great philosophers accounted it as the musical bow of the mind. he has devoted the fourth part of his "instauratio magna" to setting forth examples of inquiry and invention, choosing such subjects as are at once the most noble in themselves and the most different one from another, that there may be an example in every kind. he is not speaking of precepts and rules by way of interpretation, but actual types and models by which the entire process of the mind, and the whole fabric and order of invention, should be set, as it were, before the eyes. not only should the characters of dispositions which are impressed by nature be received into this treatise, but those also which are imposed upon the mind by sex, by age, by region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity, and the like; and, again, those that are caused by fortune, as sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy, privateness, prosperity, adversity, and the like. _the fourth part of bacon's "great instauration" is missing._ the above requirements are met in the shakespeare plays. could the dramas be more accurately described than in the foregoing extracts? from a study of the plays let a list be made out of the qualifications which the author must have possessed. it will be found that the only person in whom every qualification will be found who has lived in any age of any country was francis bacon. any investigator who will devote the time and trouble requisite for an exhaustive examination of the subject can come to no other conclusion. one cannot without feeling deep regret recognise that we have to turn to a foreigner to give "reasons for the faith which we english have in shakespeare." it was a german, schlegel, who discovered the great dramatist, and to-day we must turn to his "lectures on the drama" for the most penetrating description of his plays. the following is a translation of a passage which in describing the plays almost adopts the words bacon uses in the foregoing passages as to the scope and object of the fourth part of his "great instauration." "never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for the delineation of character as shakespeare's. it not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot speak and act with equal truth; not only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of the ancient romans, of the french in their wars with the english, of the english themselves during a great part of their history, of the southern europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the cultivated society of that time, and the former rude and barbarous state of the north; his human characters have not only such depth and precision that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible, even in conception; no, this prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries, peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings, existing only in imagination, possess such truth and consistency that even when deformed monsters like caliban, he extorts the conviction that if there should be such beings they would so conduct themselves. in a word, as he carries with him the most fruitful and daring fancy into the kingdom of nature; on the other hand, he carries nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the confines of reality. we are lost in astonishment at seeing the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard of in such intimate nearness." "if shakespeare deserves our admiration for his characters he is equally deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. he gives us the history of minds, he lays open to us in a single word a whole series of preceding conditions. his passions do not at first stand displayed to us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic poets who, in the language of lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style of love. he paints, in a most inimitable manner, the gradual progress from the first origin. 'he gives,' as lessing says, 'a living picture of all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains, of all the stratagems by which every other passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions.' of all poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental diseases--melancholy, delirium, lunacy--with such inexpressible, and in every respect definite truth, that the physician may enrich his observations from them in the same manner as from real cases." footnotes: [ ] a translation by spedding, "works," vol. iv., p. . [ ] the knowledge touching the affections and perturbations which are the diseases of the mind. [ ] tabulæ inveniendi. chapter xxv. the philosophy of bacon. to attempt anything of the nature of a review of bacon's acknowledged works is a task far too great for the scope of the present volume. to attempt a survey of the whole of his works would require years of diligent study, and would necessitate a perusal of nearly every book published in england between and . not that it is suggested that all the literature of this period was the product of his pen or was produced under his supervision, but each book published should be read and considered with attention to arrive at a selection. there has been no abler judgment of the acknowledged works than that which will be found in william hazlitt's "lectures on the literature of the age of elizabeth." lecture vii. commences with an account of the "character of bacon's works." it may not, however, be out of place here to try and make plain in what sense bacon was a philosopher. in chapter cxvi. of the "novum organum" he makes his position clear in the following words:-- "first then i must request men not to suppose that after the fashion of ancient greeks, and of certain moderns, as telesius, patricius, severinus, i wish to found a new sect in philosophy. for this is not what i am about; nor do i think that it matters much to the fortunes of men what abstract notions one may entertain concerning nature and the principles of things; and no doubt many old theories of this kind can be revived, and many new ones introduced; just as many theories of the heavens may be supposed which agree well enough with the phenomena and yet differ with each other. "for my part, i do not trouble myself with any such speculative and withal unprofitable matters. my purpose on the contrary, is to try whether i cannot in very fact lay more firmly the foundations and extend more widely the limits of the power and greatness of man ... i have no entire or universal theory to propound." so the idea that there was what is termed a system of philosophy constructed by bacon must be abandoned. what justification is there for calling him the father of the inductive philosophy? it is difficult to answer this question. spedding admits that bacon was not the first to break down the dominion of aristotle. that followed the awakening throughout the intellectual world which was brought about by the reformation and the revival of learning. sir john herschel justifies the application to bacon of the term "the great reformer of philosophy" not on the ground that he introduced inductive reasoning, but because of his "keen perception and his broad and spirit-stirring, almost enthusiastic announcement of its paramount importance, as the alpha and omega of science, as the grand and only chain for linking together of physical truths and the eventual key to every discovery and application." bacon was years of age when his "novum organum" was published. it was founded on a tract he had written in , which he called "cogitata et visa," not printed until long after his death. he had previously published a portion of his essays, the two books on "the advancement of learning" and "the wisdom of the ancients." just at the end of his life he gave to the world the "novum organum," accompanied by "the parasceve." certainly it was not understood in his time. coke described it as only fit to freight the ship of fools, and the king likened it "to the peace of god which passeth all understanding." it is admittedly incomplete, and bacon made no attempt in subsequent years to complete it. it is a book that if read and re-read becomes fascinating. taine describes it as "a string of aphorisms, a collection as it were of scientific decrees as of an oracle who foresees the future and reveals the truth." "it is intuition not reasoning," he adds. the wisdom contained in its pages is profound. an understanding of the interpretation of the idols and the instances has so far evaded all commentators. who can explain the "latent process"? but the book contains no scheme of arrangement. therein is found a series of desultory discourses--full of wisdom, rich in analogies, abundant in observation and profound in comprehension. from here and there in it with the help of the "parasceve" one can grasp the intention of the great philosopher. in chapter lxi. he says:--"but the course i propose for the discovery of sciences is such as leaves but little to the acuteness and strength of wits, but places all wits and understandings on a level." how was this to be accomplished? by the systemization of labour expended on scientific research. a catalogue of the particulars of histories which were to be prepared is appended to the "parasceve." it embraces every subject conceivable. in chapter cxi. he says, "i plainly confess that a collection of history, natural and experimental, such as i conceive it, and as it ought to be, is a great, i may say a royal work, and of much labour and expense." in the "parasceve" he says:--"if all the wits of all the ages had met or shall hereafter meet together; if the whole human race had applied or shall hereafter apply themselves to philosophy, and the whole earth had been or shall be nothing but academies and colleges and schools of learned men; still without a natural and experimental history such as i am going to prescribe, no progress worthy of the human race could have been made or can be made in philosophy and the sciences. whereas on the other hand let such a history be once provided and well set forth and let there be added to it such auxiliary and light-giving experiments as in the very course of interpretation will present themselves or will have to be found out; and the investigation of nature and of all sciences will be the work of a few years. this therefore must be done or the business given up." to carry out this work an army of workers was required. in the preparation of each history some were to make a rough and general collection of facts. their work was to be handed over to others who would arrange the facts in order for reference. this accomplished, others would examine to get rid of superfluities. then would be brought in those who would re-arrange that which was left and the history would be completed. from chapter ciii. it is clear that bacon contemplated that eventually all the experiments of all the arts, collected and digested, _should be brought within one man's knowledge and judgment_. this man, having a supreme view of the whole range of subjects, would transfer experiments of one art to another and so lead "to the discovery of many new things of service to the life and state of man." nearly three hundred years have passed since bacon propounded his scheme. the arts and sciences have been greatly advanced. they might have proceeded more rapidly had the histories been prepared, but since his time there has arisen no man who has taken "all knowledge to be his province"--no man who could occupy the position bacon contemplated. the method by which the induction was to be followed is described in chapter cv. there must be an analysis of nature by proper rejections and exclusions, and then, after a sufficient number of negatives, a conclusion should be arrived at from the affirmative instances. "it is in this induction," bacon adds, "that our chief hope lies." bacon's new organ has never been constructed, and all wits and understandings have not yet been placed on a level. we come back to the mystery of francis bacon, the possessor of the most exquisite intellect that was ever bestowed on any of the children of men. as an historian, he gives us a taste of his quality in "henry vii." in the essays and the "novum organum," sayings which have the effect of axioms are at once striking and self-evident. but he is always desultory. in perceiving analogies between things which have nothing in common he never had an equal, and this characteristic, to quote macaulay, "occasionally obtained the mastery over all his other faculties and led him into absurdities into which no dull man could have fallen." his memory was so stored with materials, and these so diverse, that in similitude or with comparison he passed from subject to subject. in the "advancement of learning" are enumerated the deficiencies which bacon observed, _nearly the whole of which were supplied during his lifetime_. the "sylva sylvarum" is the most extraordinary jumble of facts and observations that has ever been brought together. it is a literary curiosity. the "new atlantis" and other short works in quantity amount to very little. bacon's life has hitherto remained unaccounted for. in the foregoing pages an attempt has been made to offer an intelligible explanation of the work to which he devoted his life, namely, to supply the deficiencies which he had himself pointed out and which retarded the advancement of learning. hallam has said of bacon: "if we compare what may be found in the sixth, seventh, and eighth books of the 'de augmentis,' and the various short treatises contained in his works on moral and political wisdom and on human nature, with the rhetoric, ethics, and politics of aristotle, or with the historians most celebrated for their deep insight into civil society and human character--with thucydides, tacitus, phillipe de comines, machiavel, david hume--we shall, i think, find that one man may almost be compared with all of these together." pope wrote: "lord bacon was the greatest genius that england, or perhaps any other country, ever produced." if an examination, more thorough than has hitherto been made, of the records and literature of his age establishes beyond doubt the truth of the suggestions which have now been put forward, what more can be said? this at any rate, that to him shall be given that title to which he aspired and for which he was willing to renounce his own name. he shall be called "the benefactor of mankind." appendix. sir thomas bodley left behind him a short history of his life which is of a fragmentary description. one-fourth of it is devoted to a record of how much he suffered in permitting essex to urge his advancement in the state. the following is the passage:-- "now here i can not choose but in making report of the principall accidents that have fallen unto me in the course of my life, but record among the rest, that from the very first day i had no man more to friend among the lords of the councell, than was the lord treasurer burleigh: for when occasion had beene offered of declaring his conceit as touching my service, he would alwaies tell the queen (which i received from her selfe and some other ear-witnesses) that there was not any man in _england_ so meet as myselfe to undergoe the office of the secretary. and sithence his sonne, the present lord treasurer, hath signified unto me in private conference, that when his father first intended to advance him to that place, his purpose was withall to make me his colleague. but the case stood thus in my behalf: before such time as i returned from the provinces united, which was in the yeare , and likewise after my returne, the then earle of _essex_ did use me so kindly both by letters and messages, and other great tokens of his inward favours to me, that although i had no meaning, but to settle in my mind my chiefest desire and dependance upon the lord _burleigh_, as one that i reputed to be both the best able, and therewithall the most willing to worke my advancement with the queene, yet i know not how, the earle, who fought by all devices to divert her love and liking both from the father and the son (but from the sonne in speciall) to withdraw my affection from the one and the other, and to winne mee altogether to depend upon himselfe, did so often take occasion to entertaine the queene with some prodigall speeches of my sufficiency for a secretary, which were ever accompanied with words of disgrace against the present lord treasurer, as neither she her selfe, of whose favour before i was thoroughly assured, took any great pleasure to preferre me the sooner, (for she hated his ambition, and would give little countenance to any of his followers) and both the lord _burleigh_ and his sonne waxed jealous of my courses, as if under hand i had beene induced by the cunning and kindnesse of the earle of _essex_, to oppose my selfe against their dealings. and though in very truth they had no solid ground at all of the least alteration in my disposition towards either of them both, (for i did greatly respect their persons and places, with a settled resolution to doe them any service, as also in my heart i detested to be held of any faction whatsoever) yet the now lord treasurer, upon occasion of some talke, that i have since had with him, of the earle and his actions, hath freely confessed of his owne accord unto me, that his daily provocations were so bitter and sharpe against him, and his comparisons so odious, when he put us in a ballance, as he thought thereupon he had very great reason to use his best meanes, to put any man out of hope of raising his fortune, whom the earle with such violence, to his extreame prejudice, had endeavoured to dignifie. and this, as he affirmed, was all the motive he had to set himselfe against me, in whatsoever might redound to the bettering of my estate, or increasing of my credit and countenance with the queene. when i hae thoroughly now bethought me, first in the earle, of the slender hold-fast that he had in the favour of the queene, of an endlesse opposition of the cheifest of our statesmen like still to waite upon him, of his perillous, and feeble, and uncertain advice, as well in his owne, as in all the causes of his friends: and when moreover for my selfe i had fully considered how very untowardly these two counsellours were affected unto me, (upon whom before in cogitation i had framed all the fabrique of my future prosperity) how ill it did concurre with my naturall disposition, to become, or to be counted either a stickler or partaker in any publique faction, how well i was able, by god's good blessing, to live of my selfe, if i could be content with a competent livelyhood; how short time of further life i was then to expect by the common course of nature: when i had, i say, in this manner represented to my thoughts my particular estate, together with the earles, i resolved thereupon to possesse my soule in peace all the residue of my daies, to take my full farewell of state imployments, to satisfie my mind with that mediocrity of worldly living that i had of my owne, and so to retire me from the court, which was the epilogue and end of all my actions and endeavours of any important note, till i came to the age of fifty-three." the experience of bodley and bacon appears to have been identical. it certainly materially strengthens the case of those who contend that bacon's conduct to essex was not deserving of censure on the ground of ingratitude for favours received from him. the words which robert cecil addressed to bodley, namely, that "he had very great reason to use his best meanes, to put any man out of hope of raising his fortune whom the earle with such violence, to his extreame prejudice had endeavoured to dignifie," would with equal force have been applied to bacon's case. the drift of bodley's account of the matter points to his feeling that essex's conduct had not been of a disinterested character, and suggests that he felt the earle had been making a tool of him. the effect of this was that bodley adopted the course which bacon threatened to adopt when refused the office of attorney-general, solicited for him by essex--he took a farewell of state employments and retired from the court to devote himself to the service of his "reverend mother, the university of oxford," and to the advancement of her good. to this end he became a collector of books, whereas bacon would have become "some sorry book-maker or a true pioner in that mine of truth which anaxagoras said lay so deep." robert banks and son, racquet court, fleet street. [illustration:_ figure vi._] [illustration: _figure vii._] [illustration: _figure viii._] [illustration: _figure ix._] [illustration: _figure xx._] [illustration: the xxxviii. booke. the argvment _marfisa doth present herselfe before king charles, and in his presence is baptized: astolfo doth senapos sight restore, by whom such hardie feats are enterprised, that agramant therewith molested sore is by sobrino finally aduised, to make a challenge on rogeros hed, to end the troubles that the warre had bred._ _figure xiii._ _figure xiv._] [illustration: _figure x._] [illustration: _figure xv._] [illustration: _figure xi._] [illustration: _figure xii._] [illustration: _figure xxi._ the genealogies recorded in the sacred scriptvres, according to euery family and tribe. with the line of our sauiour iesvs christ obserued from _adam_ to the blessed virgin mary. _by_ i. s. cvm privilegio.] [illustration: _figure xvi._] [illustration: _figure xvii._] [illustration: _figure xviii._] [illustration: _figure xix._] * * * * * transcriber's notes . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. . long "s" has been modernized. . images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in which they are referenced. . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . the following misprints have been corrected: "obain" corrected to "obtain" (page ) "shakespere" corrected to "shakespeare" (page ) "bodly" corrected to "bodley" (page ) "shakepeare's" corrected to "shakespeare's" (page ) "commenceed" corrected to "commenced" (page ) "proecepta" corrected to "præcepta" (page ) "deficiences" corrected to "deficiencies" (page ) "numercial" corrected to "numerical" (footnote ) . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. provided by the internet archive the shakespearean myth william shakespeare and circumstantial evidence by appleton morgan author of "the law of literature," "notes to best's principles of evidence," etc., etc= ````sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves; ````sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves; ````sic vos non vobis melliflcatus apes; ````sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves. `````--_p. virgil. maro_= cincinnati, robert clarke & co to d. t. morgan, esq., of whip's cross, walthamstow, essex, england. my dear sir: i do not know your opinion on the matter treated in these pages. very possibly you will disagree with every line of my brief. but it gives me pleasure to connect my name with yours on this page, and to subscribe myself very faithfully, your kinsman, appleton morgan. october, . preface. |m. guizot, in his history of england, states the shakespearean problem in a few words, when he says: "let us finally mention the great comedian, the great tragedian, the great philosopher, the great poet, who was in his lifetime butcher's apprentice, poacher, actor, theatrical manager, and whose name is william shakespeare. in twenty years, amid the duties of his profession, the care of mounting his pieces, of instructing his actors, he composed the thirty-two tragedies and comedies, in verse and prose, rich with an incomparable knowledge of human nature, and an unequaled power of imagination, terrible and comic by turns, profound and delicate, homely and touching, responding to every emotion of the soul, divining all that was beyond the range of his experience and for ever remaining the treasure of the age--all this being accomplished, shakespeare left the theater and the busy world, at the age of forty-five, to return to stratford-on-avon, where lived peacefully in the most modest retirement, writing nothing and never returning to the stage--ignored and unknown if his works had not forever marked out his place in the world--a strange example of an imagination so powerful, suddenly ceasing to produce, and closing, once for all, the door to the efforts of genius." but m. guizot is very far from suggesting any prima facie inconsistency in this statement as it stands. since every man reads the shakespearean pages for himself and between the lines, much of what we are expected to accept as shakespearean criticism must fail of universal appreciation and sympathy. but none who read the english tongue can well be unconcerned with the question as to <b>who wrote</b> those pages; and it would be affectation to deny that the intense realism of our day is offering some startling contributions to the solution of that question. for instance, the gentlemen of the "new shakespeare society" (whom mr. swinburne rather mercilessly burlesques in his recent "_studies of shakespeare_") submit these dramas to a quantitative analysis; and, by deliberately counting the "male," "female," "weak," and "stopped" endings, and the alexandrines and catalectics (just as a mineralogist counts the degrees and minutes in the angles of his crystals), insist on their ability to pronounce didatically and infallibly what was written by william shakespeare, and at what age; what was composed by dekker, fletcher, marlowe, or anybody else; what was originally theirs, touched up by william shakespeare or _vice versa_, etc. it is curious to observe how this process invariably gives all the admirable sentiments to william shakespeare, and all the questionable ones to somebody else; but at least these new shakespearean gentlemen have surrendered somewhat of the "cast-iron" theory of our childhood--that every page, line, and word of the immortal shakespearean drama was written by william shakespeare demi-god, and by none other--perhaps, even opened a path through which the unbelievers may become, in due time, orthodox. there are still, however, a great many persons who are disposed to wave the whole question behind them, much as mr. podsnap disposed of the social evil or a famine in india. it is only a "historic doubt," they say, and "historic doubts" are not rare, are mainly contrived to exhibit syllogistic ingenuity in the teeth of facts, etc., etc. the french, they say, have the same set of problems about molière. was he a lawyer? was he a doctor? etc.--and they all find their material in internal evidence--e. g., an accurate handling of the technique of this or that profession or science: parallelism, practical coincidence, or something of that sort. the present work is an attempt to examine, for the benefit of these latter, from purely external evidence, a question which, dating only within the current quarter century, is constantly recurring to confront investigation, and, like banquo's troublesome shade, seems altogether indisposed to "down." i have to add my acknowledgments to mr. julian norris, for his careful preparation of the index to these pages. grandview-on-hudson, october , . { } the shakespearean myth. part i. the mystery. [illustration: ] he thirty-seven plays called, collectively, "shakespeare," are a phenomenon, not only in english letters, but in human experience. the literature of the country to which they belong, had, up to the date of their appearance, failed to furnish, and has been utterly powerless since, to produce any type, likeness, or formative trace of them; while the literature of other nations possesses not even a corresponding type. the history of a century on either side of their era discloses, within the precints of their birth, no resources upon which levy could have been made for their creation. they came and went like a meteor; neither borrowing of what they found, nor loaning to what they left, their own peculiar and unapproachable magnificence. the unremitting researches of two centuries have only been able to assign their authorship (where it rested at first) to an hiatus in the life of a wayward village lad named william shakespeare--who fled his native town penniless and before the constable, to return, in a few years, a well-to-do esquire--with a coat of arms and money in his pocket. { }we have the history of the boy, and certain items as to the wealthy squire, who left behind him two or three exceedingly common-place and conventional epitaphs (said to be his handiwork) and a remarkable will; but, between them, no hint of history, chronicle, or record. still, within this unknown period of this man's career, these matchless dramas came from somewhere, and passed current under his name. the death of their reputed author attracted no contemporary attention, and for many years thereafter the dramas remained unnoticed. although written in an idiom singularly open to the comprehension of all classes and periods of english-speaking men, no sooner did they begin to be remarked, than a cloud of what are politely called "commentators" bore down upon them; any one who could spell feeling at liberty to furnish a "reading;" and any one who supposed himself able to understand one of these "readings," to add a barnacle in the shape of a "note." from these "commentators" the stately text is even now in peril, and rarely, even to-day, can it be perused, except one line at a time, across the top of a dreary page of microscopic and exasperating annotation. but, up to within a very few years, hardly a handful of shakespearean students had arisen with courage to admit--what scarcely any one of the "commentators" even, could have failed to perceive--the utterly inadequate source ascribed to the plays themselves. it is not yet thirty years since an american lady was supposed to have gone crazy because she declared that william shakespeare, of the globe and black-friars theaters in london, in the days of elizabeth, was not the author of these certain dramas and poems { }for which--for almost three hundred years--he has stood sponsor. miss bacon's "madness," indeed, has been rapidly contageous. now-a-days, men make books to prove, not that william shakespeare did not write these works, but that francis bacon, walter raleigh, or some other elizabethan, did not. and we even find, now and then, a treatise written to prove that william shakespeare was, after all, their author; an admission, at least, that the ancient presumption to that effect no longer covers the case. and, doubtless, the correct view is within this admission. for, probably, if permitted to examine this presumption by the tests which would be applied to any other question of fact, namely, the tests of contemporary history, muniments, and circumstantial evidence, it will be found to be quite as well established and proved that william shakespeare was not the author of the plays that go by his name, as any other fact, occurring in london between the years and , not recorded in history or handed down by tradition, could be established and proved in . if a doubt as to the authorship of the plays had arisen at any time during or between those years, and had been kept open thereafter, the probability is that it would have been settled by this time. but, as it is, we may be pretty certain that no such doubt did arise, and that no such question was asked, during the years when those who could have dispelled the doubt or answered the question were living. when we are about to visit a theater in these days, what we ask and concern ourselves with is: is the play entertaining? does it "draw?" and, when we wit{ }ness it, the question is: do we enjoy it--or does it bore us? will we recommend our friends to come that they may be entertained, too, and that we may discuss it with them? or will we warn them to keep away? we very speedily settle these questions for ourselves. doubtless we may and do inquire who the author is. but we do not enter into any discussion upon the subject, or charge our minds enough with the matter to doubt it when we are told. the author's name is, not unusually, printed on the play-bill before us; we glance at it indifferently, take what is told us for granted, and think no more about it. if the name happens to be assumed, we may possibly see its identity discussed in the dramatic columns of our newspapers next morning, or we may not. if the play entertains us, we commend it. if it drags, we sneer at it, get up and go off. that is all the concern we give it. the evening has slipped away; and, with it, any idle speculations as to the playwright who has essayed to amuse us for an hour. if, three hundred years hence, a question as to who wrote the play we saw at mr. daly's theater or mr. wallack's theater last evening should come up, there would be very little evidence, not any records, and scarcely an exhibit to refer to in the matter. copies of the play-bill or the newspapers of the day might chance to be discovered; but these--the internal testimony of the play itself, if any, and a sort of tacit presumption growing out of a statement it was nobody's cue to inquire into at the time it was made, and had been nobody's business to scrutinize since--would constitute all the evidence at hand. how this supposititious case is precisely all-fours with the facts { }in the matter of the dramatic works which we call, collectively, shakespeare's. precisely: except that, on the evenings when those plays were acted, there were no play-bills, and, on the succeeding morning, no daily newspaper. we have, therefore, in , much fewer facilities for setting ourselves right as to their authorship than those living three hundred years after us could possess in the case we have supposed. the audiences who witnessed a certain class of plays at shakespeare's theaters, in the years between and , were entertained. the plays "drew." people talked of them about town, and they become valuable to their proprietors. the mimic lords and ladies were acceptable to the best seats; the rabble loved the show and glitter and the alarum of drums; and all were britons who gloated over rehearsal of the prowess of their own kings and heroes, and to be told that their countrymen at agincourt had slain ten thousand frenchmen at an expense of but five and twenty of themselves. but, if m. taine's description of the shakespearean theaters and the audience therein wont to assemble may be relied upon, we can pretty safely conclude that they troubled themselves very little as to who fashioned the dialogue the counterfeit kings and queens, soldiers, lords, and ladies spoke; or that they saw any thing in that dialogue to make such speculation appear worth their while. nor can we discover any evidence, even among the cultured courtiers who listened to them--or in the case of elizabeth herself, who is said to have loved them (which we may as well admit for the argument's sake)--that any recognition of the plays as works worthy of any other than a stage-manager, occurred. { }even if it should appear that these plays thus performed were the plays we now call shakespeare's; had any of this audience suspected that these plays were not written for them, but for all time; that, three hundred years later--when the plays should not only be extant, but more loved and admired than ever--the thinking world should set itself seriously to probe the mystery of their origin; there might have been some interest as to their producer manifested, and we might have had some testimony competent to the exact point to-day. but it is evident enough that no such prophetic vision was vouchsafed to them, and no such prophetic judgment passed. nor is the phenomenon exceptional. the critic, does not live, even to-day, however learned or cultured or shrewd, who would take the responsibility of affirming upon his own judgment, or even upon the universal judgment of his age and race, that any literary composition would be, after a lapse of three hundred years, not only extant, but immortal, hugged as its birthright by a whole world. such a statement would have been contrary to experience, beyond the prophecy of criticism, and therefore only to be known--if known at all--as a fact. moreover, it could only be known as a fact at the expiration of the three hundred years. doubtless, few critics would care, in any case, to commit themselves upon record one way or the other in a matter so hypothetical and speculative as the judgment of posterity upon a literary performance, and certainly nothing of the sort occurred in shakespeare's day, even if there were any dramatic or literary critics to speculate upon the subject. there can be no doubt--and it must be conceded { }--that certain acted plays _did_ pass with their first audiences, and that certain printed plays, both contemporaneously and for years thereafter, did pass with the public who read them, as the compositions of mr. manager shakespeare; and that probably even the manager's pot companions, who had better call to know him than any others, saw nothing to shake their heads at in his claim to be their author (provided he ever made any such claim; which, by the way, does not appear from any record of his life, and which nobody ever asserted as a fact). if they did--with the exception only of robert greene--they certainly kept their own counsel. on the one hand, then, the question of the authorship was never raised, and, on the other hand, if it had been, the scholars and critics who studied the plays (supposing that there were any such in those days) could not possibly have recognized them as immortal. if they had so recognized them, they would doubtless have left us something more satisfactory as to the authorship of the compositions than the mere "impression that they were informed" that the manager of the theater where they were produced wrote them; that they supposed he was clever enough to have done so, and they therefore took it for granted that he did. that is all there is of the evidence of shakespeare's own day, as to the question--if it still is a question--before us. but how about the presumption--the legal presumption, arising from such lapse of time as that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary--the presumption springing from tradition and common report--that william shakespeare composed the shakespearean plays? it is, of course, understood that one presump{ }tion is as good as another until it is disturbed. it is never safe to underrate an existing presumption; as long as it stands at all, it stands as conclusive; once overthrown, however, it is as if it had never existed. a presumption three hundred years old may be a strong one to overthrow. but if its age is all there is of it--if it be only strong in years--it can yet be toppled over. once overthrown, it is no more venerable because it is three hundred years old than if it were only three. an egg-shell will toss upon the crest of an angry surf, and, for very frailty, outride breakers when the mightiest ship man ever framed could not survive an instant. but it is only an egg-shell, for all that, and a touch of the finger will crush and destroy it. and so, formidable as it was in age, the presumption as to william shakespeare's authorship of the great dramas which for three hundred years had gone by his name, had only to be touched by the thumb and finger of common sense to crackle and shrivel like the egg that sat on the wall in the kindergarten rhyme, which all the king's army and all the king's men could not set up again, once it had tumbled over. but as the world advanced and culture increased, why did not the question arise before? simply because the times were not ripe for it. this is the age and generation for the explosion of myths, and, as one after another of them falls to pieces and disappears, who does not wonder that they have not fallen sooner? for how many years has the myth of william tell been cherished as history! and yet there is no element of absolute impossibility or even of improbability--much less of miracle--in the story of an archer with a sure eye and a steady aim. or, in the case of physical { }myths--which only required an exploration by physical sense for their explosion--the maps of two centuries or so ago represented all inaccessible seas as swarming with krakens and ship-devouring reptiles. and it is not twenty years since children were taught in their geographies that upon the coast of norway there was a whirlpool which sucked down ships prow foremost. and here, in our midst, a cannon-shot from where we sit and write these lines, there was believed to be and exist a hell gate which was a very portal of death and slaughter to hapless mariners. but there are no krakens, and not much of a maelstrom; and, for twenty years before general newton blew up a few rocks at hell gate, people had laughed at the myth of its ferocity. and again: nothing is easier than to invent a story so utterly unimportant and immaterial that it will be taken for granted, without controversy, and circulate with absolute immunity from examination, simply because worth nobody's while to contradict it. for example, it is likely enough that demosthenes, in practicing oratory, stood on a sea-beach and drilled his voice to outroar the waves. the story is always told, however, with the rider, that demosthenes did this with his mouth filled with pebble-stones; and, as nobody cares whether he did or not, nobody troubles himself to ascertain by experiment that the thing is impossible, and that nobody can roar with a mouth full of pebble-stones. and not even then would he succeed in removing the impression obtaining with the great mass of the world, that a thing is proven sufficiently if it gets into "print." charles ii. set the royal society of his day at work to { }find the reason why a dead fish weighed more than a live one--and it was only when they gave it up, that the playful monarch assured them that the fact they were searching for the reason of was not a fact at all. it is not impossible to demonstrate from experience, that the human mind will be found--as a rule--to prefer wasting laborious days in accounting for, rather than take the very simplest pains to verify even a proposition or alleged fact, which, if a fact at all, is of value beyond itself. it was objected to the system of copernicus, when first brought forward, that, if the earth turned on its axis as he represented, a stone dropped from the summit of a tower would not fall at the foot of it, but at a great distance to the west, in the same manner that a stone dropped from the masthead of a ship in full sail does not fall at the foot of the mast, but toward the stern. to this it was answered that a stone, being a part of the earth, obeys the same laws and moves with it, whereas it is no part of the ship, of which, consequently, its motion is independent. this solution was admitted by some and opposed by others, and the controversy went on with spirit; nor was it till one hundred years after the death of copernicus that, the experiment being tried, it was ascertained that the stone thus dropped from the head of the mast does fall at the foot of it. and so, if, in the case of the shakespearean authorship, the day has come for truth to dispel fiction, and reason to scout organic miracle, why should we decline to look into an alleged shakespearean myth simply because it happens to be a little tardy in coming to the surface? but, most of all, it is to be remembered that it is, practically, only our own century that has compre{ }hended the masterliness and matchlessness of the "hamlet" and "macbeth," and the rest of those transcripts of nature, the prophetic insight of whose author "spanned the ages that were to roll up after him, mastered the highest wave of modern learning and discovery, and touched the heart of all time, not through the breathing of living characters, but by lifting mankind up ont of the loud kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity; who so wrote that to his all-seeing vision schools and libraries, sciences and philosophies, were unnecessary, because his own marvelous intuition had grasped all the past and seen through all his present and all his future, and because, before his superhuman power, time and space had vanished and disappeared." * the age for which the dramas were written had not come, in that elizabethan era. * jean paul frederich richter. { }deed, why our question did not arise sooner. nobody asked, "who wrote shakespeare?" because nobody seemed to consider "shakespeare" as any thing worth speculating about. let us pause right here to demonstrate this. the tongues of the actors were tied, the ears of the audience were deaf to syllables whose burden was for the centuries that were to come after. the time for the question, "who wrote them?" was not yet. for two hundred years more--from the day of william shakespeare's death down to years within the memory of those now living--down to at least the date of lord byron (who admits that it is the perfectly correct thing to call shakespeare "god-like," "mighty," and the like, but very unfashionable to read him),--we may ransack the records of scholarship and criticism, and unearth scarcely a hint of what is now their every-where conceded superiority, to say nothing of their immortality. in short, we can not rise from such a search without understanding, very clearly in fuller, in , chronicles that william shakespeare's "genius was jocular," his comedies merry, and his tragedies wonderful; his wit quick, but that his learning was very little. evelyn notes that, in , he saw "hamlet, prince of denmark," played: "but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his majesty has been so long abroad." * pepys, his contemporary, says that the "'midsummer-night's dream' was the most insipid, ridiculous play he had ever seen.... and, but having lately read the 'adventures of five hours,' 'othello' seemed a mean thing," though he liked davenant's opera of "macbeth," with its music and dancing. ** when spending some money in books he looks over shakespeare, but chooses "'hudibras,' the book now in the greatest fashion for drollery," instead. it is doubtful if milton ever read the shakespearean plays, in spite of the eloquent verses, "what needs my shakespeare," etc.; since, in "l'allegro," he speaks of his (shakespeare's) "native wood-notes wild." *** * amenities of authors--shakespeare," p. . ** ibid., p. . *** dr. maginn, in his shakespearean papers ("learning of shakespeare"), endeavors to explain what milton meant by "native wood-notes wild." surely if there is any thing in letters that is not "native wood-notes," it is the stately shakespearean verse, full of camps and courts, but very rarely of woodlands and { }pastures; besides, whatever milton might say of the book called "shakespeare" in poetry--like ben jon-son--he showed unmitigated contempt for its writer in prose: about the worst thing he could say about his king in "the iconoclast," was that charles i. kept an edition of shakespeare for his closet companion. * "other stuff of this sort," cries the blind poet, "may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used much license in departing from the truth of history." ** in , one nahum tate, supposed to be a poet (a delusion so widespread that he was actually created "poet laureate") stumbled upon "a thing called lear," assigned to one william shakespeare, and, after much labor, congratulated himself upon having "been able to make a play out of it." *** * "amenities of authors--shakespeare," vol. ii, p. . ibid., p. , note. ** it is fair to say that "stuff" may only have meant "matter," but it is indisputable that the passage was meant as a slur on one who would read "shakespeare." *** the "play" he did make out of it is to be found in w. h. smith's "bacon and shakespeare," p. . { }so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth nor the serious part your concernment.... john dryden, in or about , in his "defence of the epilogue," a postscript to his tragedy "the conquest of granada," says: "let any man who understands english, read diligently the works of shakespeare and fletcher, and i dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; and yet these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven." he denounces "the lameness of their plots," made up of some "ridiculous incoherent story,... either grounded on impossibilities, or, at least, he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers of our own or any precedent age." of the audiences who could tolerate such matter, he says: "they knew no better, and therefore were satisfied with what they brought. those who call theirs the 'golden age of poetry,' have only this reason for it: that they were then content with acorns before they knew the use of bread," etc. * to show the world how william shakespeare _should_ have written, mr. dryden publishes his own improved version of "troilus and cressida," "with an abjectly fulsome dedication to the earl of sunderland, and a preface," ** in which he is obliging enough to say that the style of shakespeare being "so pestered with figurative expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure;" that, though "the author seems to have began it with some fire, the characters of 'pandarus' and 'troilus' are promising enough, but, as if he grew weary of his task, after an entrance or two, he lets 'em fall, and the latter part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets, excursions and alarms. the chief persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive. 'cressida' is left alive and is not punished." * "works," edited by malone, vol. ii, p. . ** "troilus and cressida, or truth found too late." written by john dryden, servant to his majesty, london ( to) printed for abel small, at the unicorn at the west end of st. paul's, and jacob tonson, at the judge's head, in chancery lane, near fleet street. . "i have undertaken to remove that heap of rubbish.... i new-modelled the plot; threw out many unnecessary persons, improved { }those characters which were begun and left unfinished,... made, with no small trouble, an order and connection of the scenes, and... so ordered them that there is a coherence of 'em with one another,... a due proportion of time allowed for every motion,... have refined the language, etc." the same thing was done in , by ravenscroft, who produced an adaptation of "titus andronicus," and boasted "that none in all the author's works ever received greater alterations or additions; the language not only refined, but many scenes entirely new, besides most of the principal characters heightened, and the plot much increased." john dennis, a critic of that day, declares that shakespeare "knew nothing about the ancients, set all propriety at defiance,... was neither master of time enough to consider, correct, and polish what he had written,... his lines are utterly void of celestial fire," and his verses "frequently harsh and unmusical." he was, however, so interested in the erratic and friendless poet that he kindly altered "the merry wives of windsor," and touched up "coriolanus," which he brought out in , under the title of "the invader of his country, or the fatal resentment." the play, however, did not prosper, and he attributed it to the fact that it was played on a wednesday. dean swift, in his "the narrative of dr. robert norris, concerning the strange and deplorable frenzy of john dennis," relates how the said dennis, being in company with lintot, the bookseller, and shakespeare being mentioned as of a contrary opinion to mr. dennis, the latter "swore the said shakespeare was a rascal, with other defamatory expressions, which gave mr. lintot a very ill opinion of the said shake{ }speare." lord shaftesbury complains, at about the same date, of shakespeare's "rude and unpolished style and antiquated phrase and wit." * * mr. de quincy's painful effort to demonstrate that neither dryden nor shaftesbury meant what he said is amusing reading. see his "shakespeare" in the "encyclopaedia britannica." also knight, "studies of shakespeare," p. , as to dr. johnson. thomas rymer knows exactly how othello, which he calls "a bloody farce, the tragedy of the pocket-handkerchief," ought to have been done. in the first place, he is angry that the hero should be a black-a-moor, and that the army should be insulted by his being a soldier. of "desdemona" he says: "there is nothing in her which is not below any country kitchen-maid--no woman bred out of a pigstye could talk so meanly." speaking of expression, he writes that "in the neighing of a horse or in the growling of a mastiff there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, i may say, more humanity, than in the tragical flights of shakespeare." he is indignant that the catastrophe of the play should turn on a handkerchief. he would have liked it to have been folded neatly on the bridal couch, and, when othello was killing desde-mona, "the fairy napkin might have started up to disarm his fury and stop his ungracious mouth. then might she, in a trance of fear, have lain for dead; then might he, believing her dead, and touched with remorse, have honestly cut his own throat, by the good leave and with the applause of all the spectators, who might thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, and admiring the beauty of providence freely and truly represented in the theater. then for the unraveling, of the plot, as they call it, never was old { }deputy recorder in a country town, with his spectacles on, summing up the evidence, at such a puzzle, so blundered and be doltified as is our poet to have a good riddance and get the catastrophe off his hands. what can remain with the audience to carry home with them? how can it work but to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, scare our imaginations, corrupt our appetite, and till our head with vanity, confusion, tintamarre and jingle-jangle, beyond what all the parish clerks in london could ever pretend to?" he then hopes the audience will go to the play as they go to church, namely, "sit still, look on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the play more than they would a sermon." with regard to "julius cæsar," he is displeased that shakespeare should have meddled with the romans. he might be "familiar with othello and iago as his own natural acquaintances, but cæsar and brutus were above his conversation." to put them "in gulls' coats and make them jack-puddens," is more than public decency should tolerate--in mr. rymer's eyes. of the well-known scene between brutus and cassius, this critic remarks: "they are put there to play the bully and the buffoon, to show their activity of face and muscles. they are to play for a prize, a trial of skill and hugging and swaggering like two drunken hectors for a twopenny reckoning." rymer calls his book "a short view of tragedy, with some reflections on shakespeare and other practitioners for the stage." hume thought that both bacon and shakespeare showed "a want of simplicity and purity of diction with defective taste and elegance," and that "a reasonable propriety of { }thoughts he (shakespeare) can not at any time uphold." voltaire thought the shakespearean kings "not completely royal." pope (who declared that rymer, just quoted, was "a learned and strict critic"), to show that he was not insensible to the occasional merits of the plays, was good enough to distinguish, by inverted commas, such passages as he thought might be safely admired by the rest of mankind; while richard steele, in "the tatler," * borrows the story of the "taming of the shrew," and narrates it as "an incident occurring in lincolnshire," feeling, no doubt, that he did a good deed in rescuing whatever was worth preserving from the clutches of such obscure and obsolete literature! and then came the period when scholars and men of taste were ravished with addison's stilted rhymes, and the six-footed platitudes of pope, and the sesquepedalian derivatives dealt out by old samuel johnson. the shakespearean plays are pronounced by mr. addison ** "very faulty in hard metaphors and forced expressions," and he joins them with "xat. lee," as "instances of the false sublime." * vol. vi, no. . he complains, in number , that the female characters in the play make "so small a figure." ** spectator, ; p. . samuel johnson is reported as saying that william shakespeare never wrote six consecutive lines (he subsequently made it seven) without "making an ass of himself," (in which speech he seems to have followed his namesake without the "h," old ben, in the "discoveries")--backing up his assertion with some very choice specimens of literary criticism. let any one, interested enough in { }the matter to see for himself, take down dr. johnson's own edition of shakespeare, and read his commentaries on the shakespearean text. let him turn, for example, to where he says of "hamlet": _we must allow to the tragedy of "hamlet" the praise of variety. the incidents are so numerous that the argument of the play would make a long tale. the scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity,... that includes judicious and instructive observations.... new characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. the pretended madness of hamlet causes much mirth;... the catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of necessity than a stroke of art. a scheme might easily be formed to kill hamlet with the dagger and laertes with the bowl._ again, of "macbeth": _this play is deservedly celebrated for the propriety of its fiction, and solemnity, grandeur, and variety of its action, but it has no nice discriminations of character.... i know not whether it may not be said in defense of some parts which now seem improbable, that in shakespeare's time it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive predictions._ again, of "julius cæsar": _of this tragedy, many particular passages deserve regard, and the contention and reconcilement of brutus and cassius is universally celebrated. but i have never been strongly agitated in perusing it, and think it somewhat cold and unaffecting, etc._ was "hamlet" a low comedy part, in the days when all england bowed at the feet of an unkempt and mannerless old man, awed by the brilliancy of his literary judgment? and did hamlet's "pretended madness" cause "much mirth" to the age, or only to { }samuel johnson? people now-a-days do not sit and giggle over "the pretended madness of hamlet." but, waiving these questions, let him turn to the "rambler," * of this excellent lexicographer, and read him (patiently, if he can), citing the magnificent lines--= `````come thick night ```and pall thee in the dun nest smoke of hell; ```that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, ```nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark ```to cry "_hold, hold!"_= as an example of "poetry debased by mean expressions;" because "dun" is a "low" expression," seldom heard but in the stable;" "knife" an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employment; and asking "who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt _peeping_ through the blanket of the dark!" * no. . let the reader look on a little further, and find this fossil-scanning machine telling off the spondees and dactyls in the dramas (to ascertain if the cæsura was exactly in the middle) on his fingers and thumbs, and counting the unities up to three, to see if he could approve of what the ages after him were to worship! if, haply, this shakespeare (although he _might_ have devised a scheme to kill laertes with the bowl and hamlet with the dagger, or _might_ have thrown a little more fire into the quarrel with brutus and cassius) could be admitted to sit at the feet of addison, with his sleepy and dreary "campaign;" or pope, with his metrical proverbs about "man;" or even the aforesaid samuel johnson himself, with his rhymed dic{ }tionaries about the "vanity of human wishes," and so on. let him find the old lexicographer admitting, in his gracious condescension, that "the tempest" "is sufficiently regular;" of "measure for measure" that "the unities are sufficiently preserved;" that the "midsummer night's dream" was "well written;" that the style of the "merchant of venice" was "easy:" but that in "as you like it" "an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson" is unhappily lost. the "winter's tale" is "entertaining;" in "king john" he finds "a pleasing interchange of incidents and characters," remarking that "the lady's grief is very affecting." of "troilus and cressida" the old formalist says, that it "is one of the most correctly written of shakespeare's plays;" of "coriolanus," that it "is one of the most amusing." but, he says, that "antony and cleopatra" is "low" and "without any art of connection or care of disposition." he dismisses "cymbeline" with the remark that he does not care "to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility; upon faults too evident for detection and too gross for aggravation." he is pleased to approve of "romeo and juliet," because "the incidents are numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires" and, while on the whole, approving of "othello," he can not help remarking that, "had the scene opened in cyprus, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related, there had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous regularity." and so on every-where! let the reader imagine one thus patronizing these mighty and deathless monographs to-day! let him { }imagine a better illustration, if he can, of what our johnson's friend pope called--in long meter--"fools rushing; in where angels feared to tread!" and let him confess to himself that these were not the times nor the men to raise the question. is it not the fact that, until our own century, the eyes of the world were darkened, and men saw in these shakespearean dramas only such stage plays, satisfying the acting necessities of almost any theater, as might have been written--not by "the soul" of any age; not by a man "myriad-minded" not by a "morning-star of song," or a "dear son of memory," but--by a clever playwright? the sort of days when an addison could have been pensioned for his dreary and innocent "campaign," and a mr. pye made poet-laureate of the laud where an unknown pen had once written "hamlet were, consequently, _not_ the days for the discovery with which this century has crowned itself--namely, the discovery that the great first of poets lived in the age when england and america were one world by themselves, and that they must now draw together again to search for the master "who came"--to use, with all reverence, the words of judge holmes--"upon our earth, knowing all past, all present, and all future, to be leader, guide, and second gospel of mankind." but the fullness of time has come, and we now know that, whoever was the poet that he "kept," he was of quite another kidney than the manager of the theater, "william shakespeare, who employed him to write plays, and who wrote revelations and gospels instead. if we were interested to inquire what manner of man mr. manager shakespeare was, we have only to { }look about us among the managers of theaters in this latter half of our nineteenth century. let us take mr. wallack or mr. daly, both of whom arrange plays for the stages of their own theaters, for example; or, better yet, take mr. lion boucieault, who is an actor as well as a manager, and is, moreover, as successful in his day as was william shakespeare in his. mr. boucieault has, so far, produced about one hundred and thirty-seven successful plays. mr. william shakespeare produced about a hundred less. all of mr. boucicault's plays show that gentleman's skillful hand in cutting, expanding, arranging, and setting for the stage; and in the representation of them, mr. boucieault has himself often participated. in like manner, mr. shakespeare, the manager, we are told by tradition, often assisted at the representation of the dramas produced on his boards, playing the ghost in "hamlet," * and the king in "henry vi," which indicate very readily that his place in the "stock" was that of a "walking (or utility) gentleman." * and played it, it is thought by some, so wretchedly that he made "the gods" hoot. at any rate, in a pamphlet published by lodge, in , "witt's miserie and the world's madness; discovering the devil's incarnate of this age," a devil named "hate-vertue" is described as looking "as pale as the vizard of the ghost, which cried so miserably at the theatre like an oister-wife, 'hamlet--revenge.'" but perhaps shakespeare did not play the ghost that night. shakespeare also played "old knowell," jonson's "every man in his humor," "adam," in "as you like it," and, according to jonson, apart in the latter's "legacies," in . we happen to know, also, that mr. shakespeare rewrote for the stage what his unknown poet, poets, or friends composed, from the tolerable hearsay testimony of his fellow { }actor, ben jonson, who tells us that he remembers to have heard the players say that the stage copies of the plays were written in shakespeare's autograph, and were all the more available on that account, because he (shakespeare), was a good penman, in that "whatever he penned, he never blotted line." * mr. boucicault, while claiming the full credit to which he is entitled, is quite too clever, as well as too conscientious to set up for an original author or a poet, as well as a playwright. neither does shakespeare (as we have already said), anywhere appear to have ever claimed to be a poet, or even to have taken to himself--what we may, however, venture to ascribe to him--the merit of the stage-setting of the dramatic works, which, having been played at his theater, we collectively call the "shakespearean plays" to-day. why, then, to begin with, should we not conceive of mr. manager shakespeare discharging the same duties as mr. wal-lack, mr. daly, or mr. boucicault? as very much--from the necessities of his vocation--the same sort of man as either of them? * post, part iii, the jonsonian testimony. there is scarcely any evidence either way; but the fact that the actors were in the habit of receiving their fair copy of these plays from the manager's--william shakespeare's--own hand, seems to make it evident that he did not originally compose them. indeed, if shakespeare had been their author, well-to-do and bustling manager as he was, he would probably have intrusted their transcription to some subordinate or supernumerary; or, better yet, would have kept a playwright of experience to set his compositions for the { }stage, to put in the necessary localisms, "gags," and allusions to catch the ear of the penny seats. such a division of labor is imperative to-day, and was imperative then--or at least to suppose that it was not, is to suppose that of his dozen or so of co-managers, william shakespeare was the one who did all the work, while the others looked on. but, it is surmised that shakespeare was his own playwright; took the dramas and rewrote them for the actors; he inserted the requisite business, the exits, and entrances, and--when necessary--suited the reading to the actor who was to pronounce the dialogue, according as he happened to be fat or lean. * * it may be noted that the line, "he's fat and scant of breath," does not occur in the early and imperfect edition of "hamlet" of . was it added to suit burbadge? and was there a further change made also to suit mr. burbadge, the leading tragedian of the time? in the edition of , the grave-digger says of yorick's skull: looke you, here's a skull hath bin here this dozen year, let me see, ever since our last king hamlet slew fortenbrasse in combat, young hamlet's father, he that's mad. but in all subsequent editions, the grave-digger says: "here's a skull now; this skull has lain i' the earth three and twenty years." the effect of this alteration is to add considerably to hamlet's age. "alas, poor yorick!" he says, "i knew him, horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. here hung those lips that i have kissed, i know not how oft," etc. how old, then, was hamlet when yorick died? but hamlet's age is even more distinctly fixed by other lines which do not occur in the early edition of : _hamlet._--how long hast thou been a grave-maker? _first clown_.--of all the days of the year, i came to 't that day that our last king hamlet o'ercame fortenbras. _hamlet._--how long is that since? _first clown._--can not tell that? every fool can tell that; it was the very day that young hamlet was born; he that is mad and sent to england. and presently he adds: i have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years. mr. marshall writes: "it would appear that shakespeare added these details, which tend to prove hamlet to have been thirty years old, for much the same reason as he inserted the line, 'he's fat and scant of breath,' namely, in order to render hamlet's age and personal appearance more in accordance with those of the great actor, burbadge, who personated him." the edition of is generally accounted a piratical copy of the first sketch of the play.--_all the year found._ { }such was the employment which fell to the part of william shakespeare, in the division of labor among the management in which he was a partner, and the resulting manuscript was what ben jonson's friends told him of. for nobody, we fancy, quite supposes that the poet, whoever he was, produced "hamlet" one evening, "macbeth" on another, and "julius cæsar" on another, without blotting or erasing, changing, pruning or tiling a line, and then handed his original drafts to the players next morning to learn their parts from! this is not the way that poems are written (nor, we may add, the way theaters are managed). the greater the geniuses, the more they blotch and blot and dash their pens over the paper when the frenzy is in possession of them. and besides, the fact that there exist to-day, and always have existed, numerous and diverse readings of the shakespearean text, does very clearly show that their author or authors did, at different times, vary and alter the construction of the text { }as taste or fancy dictated, and, therefore, that the manuscripts ben jonson's friends saw and told him of (and heminges & condell, as far as their testimony is of any value, confirm jonson, for they assert that what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have received from him "scarce a blot in his papers", were the acting copies, and not the original manuscripts of the shakespearean plays. with the exception of ben jonson (to whose panegyric we devote a chapter in its place further on), the contemporaries of william shakespeare, who celebrated his death in verse, nowhere assert him to have been the myriad-minded oceanic (to use coleridge's adjectives) genius which we conceive him now-a-days--which he _must_ have been to have written the works now assigned to him. let any one doubting this statement open the pages of dr. ingleby's "shakespeare's centurie of prayse," a work claimed by its compiler to be inclusive of every allusion to, comment or criticism on shakespeare, which dr. ingleby has been able to unearth in print, dating anywhere within one hundred years of shakespeare's death. we have industriously turned every page of this work, and will submit to any other who will do the same, the question whether it contains a line which exhibits william shakespeare as any other than a wit, a successful actor, a poet of the day, a genial and generous friend, a writer of plays, or whether--when eulogistic of the plays called his seven years after his death (a very different list, by the way, than the one assigned him during his life), rather than biographical as to the man, they are of any more value as _evidence_ than gray's or milton's magnificent apostrophes to a genius with whom their { }only familiarity was through report, rumor, or impression derived from the ever immortal works. for, like gray, coleridge, emerson--all that john milton knew about william shakespeare was pure hearsay, derived from local report or perusal of the shakespearean plays ("a book invalued," he calls them). even if we were called upon to do so, we could hardly conceive milton--a puritan, and a blind puritan at that--as much of a play-goer or boon companion of actors and managers. but we are not called upon to imagine any thing of the sort; for, as a matter of fact, john milton was exactly seven years and four months old when william shakespeare died. and so, what is called "the milton testimony," upon examination, proves to be no testimony at all, but only hearsay--venerable, perhaps--but hearsay, nevertheless; * as utterly immaterial as his "marbling his native wood notes wild"--a line that might be, not inaptly, applied to robert burns, but which suggests almost any thing except the stately and splendid pages of the shakespearean opera--to which we have before alluded as justifying us, indeed, in wondering if the puritan poet had ever gone so far, before formulating his opinion, as to open the book assigned to the shakespeare he wrote of. * milton was the enemy of all the ilk. "this would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rimers and playwriters be," he says in his essays "of education," in . and so, in the first place, there was no great call or occasion for discussion as to the authorship of the shakespearean dramas in the days when they first began to be known by the public; and, as for mr. manager shakespeare's friends, and the actors of his company, { }they testified to what they had heard, and, if they knew any thing to the contrary, they kept it to themselves. if his friends, jealous of his reputation, they were not solicitous of heralding him a fraud; and if the "stock" upon his pay-roll, they held their bread at his hand, and were not eager to offend him. if--as we shall notice further on--a wise few did suspect the harmless imposition, either they had grounds for not mentioning it, or there were reasons why people did not credit them. and so, in the second place, the times were not ripe for the truth to be known, because there was nobody who cared about knowing it, and nobody to whom it could be a revelation. to suppose that william shakespeare wrote the plays which we call his, is to suppose that a miracle was vouchsafed to the race of man in london in the course of certain years of the reign of elizabeth. if, however, instead of probing for miracles, we come to consider that men and managers and theaters in the age of elizabeth were very much the same sort of creatures and places that we find them now; that, among the habitues of the globe and blackfriars theaters in that reign, were certain young gentlemen of abundant leisure and elegant education who admitted managers into their acquaintance by way of exchange for the entre of the green-room; and that managers in those days as in these, were always on the alert for novelties, and drew their material--in the crude, if necessary, to be dressed up, or ready made, if they were so fortunate--from wherever they could find it; if, in short, we find that among the curled darlings who frequented master william shakespeare's side doors there was at least one poet, and, in their vicinity, { }at least one ready writer who was so placed as to be eager to write anonymously for bread (and who, moreover, had access to the otherwise sealed and occult knowledge, philosophy, and reading, of which the giants of his day--to say nothing of the theater-managers--did not and could not dream)--if, we say, we consider all this, we need pin our faith to no miracles, but expect only the ordinary course of human events. if william shakespeare were an unknown quantity, like homer, to be estimated only by certain masterly works assigned to him, this answer might, indeed, be different. for, just as homer's writings are so magnificent as to justify ascribing to him--so far as mere power to produce them goes--any other contemporary literature to be discovered, so the works attributed to william shakespeare are splendid enough to safely credit him with the compositions of any body else; of even so great a man as bacon, for example. but william shakespeare is no unknown quantity--except that we lose sight of him for the few years between his leaving stratford, and (as part proprietor of the largest london play-house) accepting ben jonson's play of "every man in his humour"--we know pretty well all about him. there are half a hundred biographies extant--new ones being written every day--and any one of them may be consulted as to the manner of life william shakespeare's was. the breakneck marriage bond, which waived all formalities, the consent of any body's parents, justification of sureties, three askings of banns, etc., so he could only be fast married; the beer-bouts, youthful and harmless enough; the poaching, enough worse, sir thomas lucy thought, to justify instructing a war{ }wick attorney to prosecute the lad before the law: all these are matter of record, amply photographing for-us william shakespeare in stratford. then the hiatus--and this same lad appears, prosperous, and in the great town; sending home money to his impoverished family--part proprietor of a theater, purchasing freehold estates in london--a grant of arms for his father--the great house in his native village for his own homestead; investing in the tithings of his county, and beginning a chancery suit to recover lands which his father--in his poverty--had allowed himself to forfeit by foreclosure. surely we will not go far astray if we set it down that some pretty hard work at what this rising lad found to do in london, and learned to do best, has filled up those unrecorded years! was all this money made by writing plays for the globe, or by working on bacon's novum organum, or by other literary labor? was that the hard work william shakespeare found to do, and laid up money at, in the interval between his last crop of wild oats at stratford, and the condescension of the man of affairs in london? if it were, it is curious that no rumor or tradition of it comes from stratford. nothing travels quite so fast in rural neighborhoods as a reputation for "book learning," while the local worthy, who has actually written a book of his own, is a landmark in his vicinage. now, william shakespeare died one of the richest men--if not the richest--in all stratford. it is strange that the gossip and goodwives, who so loaded themselves with his boyish freaks and frailties, should never have troubled themselves about his manly pursuits and accomplishments. the only english compositions he is credited within stratford gossip are one { }or two excessively conventional epitaphs on elias james, john a coombe, and others--the latter of which is only to be appreciated by a familiarity with warwickshire patois. he sprang from a family so illiterate that they could not write their own name; and, moreover, lived and died utterly indifferent as to how anybody else wrote it--whether with an "x" or a "g," a "c" or a "ks." and as he found them, so he left them. for, although william shakespeare enjoyed an income of $ , (present value of money) at his death, he never had his own children taught to read and write, and his daughter judith signed her mark to her marriage bond. that the rustic youth, whom local traditions variously represent as a scapegrace, a poacher, a butcher's apprentice, and the like, but never as a school-boy, a student, a reader, a poet--as ever having been seen with a hook in his hand--driven by poverty to shift for himself, should at once (for the dates, as variously given by mr. malone and mr. grant white, are exceedingly suggestive) become the alter ego of that most lax, opulent, courtly, and noble young gentleman about town, southampton, is almost incredible. but, it is no more incredible than that this ill-assorted friendship can be accounted for by the lad's superhuman literary talents. southampton never was suspected, during his lifetime, of a devotion to literature, much less of an admiration for letters so rapt as to make him forget the gulf between his nobility and that of a peasant lad--who (even if we disbelieve his earliest biographers as to the holding horses and carrying links) must necessarily have been employed in the humblest pursuits at the outset of his london { }career. but yet, according to the various "chronologies" (which, in the endeavor to crowd these works into william shakespeare's short life, so as to tally with the dates--when known--of their production, only vary inconsiderably after all), the stratford boy hardly puts in his appearance in london before he presents lord southampton, as the "first heir of his invention," with--if not the most mature--at least the most carefully polished production that william shakespeare's name was ever signed to; and, moreover, as polished, elegant, and sumptuous a piece of rhetoric as english letters has ever produced down to this very day. now, even if, in stratford, the lad had mastered all the latin and greek extant; this poem, dedicated to southampton, coming from his pen, is a mystery, if not a miracle. the genius of robert burns found its expression in the _idiom_ of his father and his mother, in the dialect he heard around him, and into which he was born. when _he_ came to london, and tried to warble in urban english, his genius dwindled into formal commonplace. but william shakespeare, a peasant, born in the heart of warwickshire; without schooling or practice, pours forth the purest and most sumptuous of english, unmixed with the faintest trace of that warwickshire patois, that his neighbors and coetaneans spoke--the language of his own fireside! as a matter of fact, _english_, was a much rarer accomplishment in the days when thomas jenkins and thomas hunt were masters of stratford grammar school, than greek and latin. children, in those days, were put at their hic, hæc, hoc at an age when we { }send them to kindergartens. but no master dreamed of drilling them in their own vernacular. admitting william shakespeare to have been born a poet, he must also have been born a master of the arbitrary rules of english rhetoric, etymology, syntax, and prosody, as well, to have written that one poem. but, say the shakespeareans, even if william did not study english at the stratford grammar school, or read it in those crowded days when earning his bread by menial employment in stranger london, he had an opportunity to study lyly, nash, greene, peele, chettle, and the rest. but the shakespearean vocabulary--like the whole canon of the plays--is a thing apart--unborrowed, unimitated, and unlearned from any of these. _these_ were satisfied to write for the stages of the barns called "play-houses," and for their audiences, which--according to all reports--were decidedly indifferent as to scholarship. _these_ might introduce a frenchman, but they never troubled themselves to make him french; or a scotchman, but they never stopped to make him scotch. but even if william shakespeare, in the immersions of the management, was author of that intellectual dane, over-refined in a german university of metaphysics, he called hamlet; or of that crafty italian, named iago; or of that roman iceberg, brutus--it is quite as difficult to conceive either the skylarking boy in stratford, where there were no libraries, and his father too poor (not daring to stir beyond his threshold for fear of arrest for debt) to buy books; or the self-made man toiling from the bottom rung of poverty to the top of fortune--with leisure to study the characteristics of race and nationality--as acquiring all the grandeur of dic{ }tion, insight into the human heart (which, at least, is not guess-work), knowledge and philosophy, we call his to-day. even if we go no further than the "venus and adonis"--appearing at a date preluding a drill that, for the sake of the argument, we might even assume--how could that poem have been written by the peasant who only knew his native dialect, or the penniless lad earning his bread in stranger london, at the first shift at hand--with no entre to the great libraries, and no leisure to use one if he had it? ben jonson spent some years at cambridge before he was taken away and set at brickmaking--he is said to have been a very studious brickmaker, working, according to fuller, with a trowel in one hand and a book in the other. as to his career as a soldier--a soldier, when not actually in the field or on the march, may find considerable opportunity for rumination; and, when lying in jail, he would certainly have ample leisure for his greek and roman. but jonson wrote for the elizabethan theaters; he lived and died hungry and poor, a borrower, over his ears in debt to the last. william shakespeare, his contemporary, loaned ben jonson money; rose rapidly from penury to affluence; made his father rich, and a gentleman with an escutcheon; bought himself the most splendid house in stratford (so splendid as to be deemed worthy a royal residence by queen henrietta); invested in outlying lands; speculated in tithes, and lived, until his death--according to dominie ward--at the rate of $ , a year. we are familiar enough with these stories of self-made men (so-called) in our daily newspapers. let those who will, believe that william shakespeare accumulated this splendid fortune, _not_ by the success{ }ful management of the best appointed and affected theater in london, but by writing plays for its stage! and--at the same time--conceived, evolved from his own inner consciousness, all the learning which other playwrights (like ben jonson and the rest) were obliged--like ordinary mortals--to get out of books! the only efforts made to account for this wealth flowing into the coffers of a poet, have been mere surmises, like the story of southampton's munificence, and of the royal favor of king james, who wrote the manager a letter with his own hand. but neither of these stories happens to be contemporary with william shakespeare himself. the first was an afterthought of davenant, who was ten years old when shakespeare died; and who is not accepted as an authority, even as to his own pedigree, by the very commentators who most eagerly seize upon and swear to his southampton fiction. the other is not even hearsay, but the bold invention of bernard lintot, who published an edition of the plays in . doubtless, as has been the ambition of all the commentators, before mr. collier and since, lintot was bound to be at least one fact ahead of his rivals, even if he had to invent that fact himself, he vouchsafes, as authority for this tale of the royal letter, however, the statement of "a credible person now living," who saw the letter itself in the possession of davenant: in the teeth of the certainty that, had davenant ever possessed such a letter, davenant would have taken good care that the world should never hear the last of it: and coyly preserves the incognito of the "credible person," whom, however, oldys conjectures must have been, if any body, the duke of buckingham. { }but, miracles aside, to consider william shakespeare as the author of the shakespearean drama--for that he has christened it, and that it will go forever by his name, we concede--involves us in certain difficulties that seem altogether insurmountable. in the first place, scholars and thinkers, whose hearts have been open to the matchless message of the shakespearean text, and who found themselves drawn to conclude that such a man as william shakespeare once lived, were amazed to discover that the very evidence which forced them to that conclusion, also proved conclusively that that individual _could not_ have written the dramas since known by his name. coleridge, schlegel, goethe, jean paul richter, carlyle, palmerston, emerson, hallam, delia bacon, gervinus, and, doubtless, many more, clearly saw that the real shakespeare was not the shakespeare we have described. "in spite of all the biographies, 'ask your own hearts,' says coleridge--'ask your own common sense to conceive the possibility of this man being... the anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism. what! are we to have miracles in sport? or (i speak reverently) does god choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?'" "if there was a shakespeare of earth, as i suspect," says hallam--alluding to the fact that all the commentators told him of the man shakespeare, inferred him as anything but the master he was cited--"there was also one of heaven, and it is of him we desire to learn more." * ** * "notes to shakespeare's works," iv., .--holmes "authorship of shakespeare," . ** "bacon and shakespeare," by w. h. smith, p. . { }this evidence was of three sorts: . official records and documents; . the testimony of contemporaries; and, . that general belief, reputation, and tradition, which, left to itself in the manner we have indicated, has grown into the presumption of nearly three hundred years. we will not recapitulate the well-thumbed records, nor recite the dog's-eared testimony, which together gave rise to the presumption. but the dilemma presented to the student was in this wise: by the parish records it appeared that a man child was christened in stratford church april th, (old style) , by the name william. he was the son of one john shakespeare, a worthy man, who lived by either, or all, the trades of butcher, wool-comber, or glover--three not incompatible pursuits variously assigned him--was, at different times, a man of some means, even of local importance, (becoming, on one occasion, even ale-taster for the town,) and, at his son's birth, owner in freehold of two plots of ground in stratford village, on one of which plots a low-raftered house now stands, which has come to be a mecca to which pilgrims from the whole world reverently repair. the next official record of the son so born to john shakespeare is the marriage-bond to the bishop of worcester; enabling this son to wed one anne hathaway, his senior in years, which bond remains to this day on file in the office of the prerogative court of canterbury. later on, the son, having become a person of means, purchases for his father a grant of arms; and (the name being shakespeare) the heralds allot him an escutcheon on which is represented a shaking spear (symbolically treated)--a device which, under the circumstances, { }did not tax the heralds' ingenuity, or commit them to any theory about ancestors at hastings or among the saracens. the increasing wealth of the son leaves its traces in the title-deeds to and records of purchase of freehold and leasehold possessions, of the investment in meadow-lands, and tithes, and of sundry law suits incidental to these. local tradition--which in like cases is perforce admitted as evidence--supplements all this record, and, so far as it can, confirms it, until we have an all but complete biography. this biography the world knows by heart. it does not esteem the boy william shakespeare the less because he was a boy--because--in the age and period reserved for that crop--he sowed and garnered his "wild oats." it has reason to believe him to have been much more than a mere wayward youth. aubrey ("old aubrey," "arch-gossip aubrey," the shakespeareans call him, probably because he wrote his sketch fifty years after his subject's death, instead of two hundred and fifty), says that he was the village prodigy, that "he exercised his father's trade--but, when he killed a calf he would do it in high style and make a speech," etc., etc. nor is there anything in the record of his mature and latter years--of his investments in tithes, and messuages, and homesteads--of his foreclosures and suits for money loaned and malt delivered--of his begetting children and dying; leaving--still with finical detail and nice and exact economy--an elaborate testament, in which he disposes, item by item, of each worldly thing and chattel, down to the second-best bedstead in his chambers, which he tenderly bestows upon the wife of his youth and the { }mother of his children--any thing at which the world should sneer. if he has done any thing worthy of posterity, he shows no especial anxiety that posterity shall hear of it. besides such contracts and business papers as he must sign in the course of his lesseeship at the theaters, and in the investment of his savings, he leaves his name to nothing except a declaration of debt against a poor neighbor who is behind-hand with his account, footed at one pound fifteen shillings and sixpence, and a not over-creditable last will and testament. this is his own business, and who has any thing to say? but, when our biographers go a step further and demand that we shall accept this as the record of a demigod; of the creator of a "hamlet" and an "othello;" and this practical and thrifty soul, who ran away to london--worked himself up (as he must have worked himself up) to the proprietorship of a theater; and, in that business and calling earned money and kept it--as the identical man who singly and alone wrote the "hamlet," the ".julius cæsar," the "othello," and all the splendid pages of the shakespearean drama--some of us have been heard to demur! the scholar's dilemma is how to reconcile the internal evidence of the plays, which is spread before them undimmed by age, with these records, which are as authentic and beyond question as the internal evidence itself. and, once stated, the dilemma of the scholar becomes the dilemma of the whole world. let any one try to conceive of the busy manager of a theater (an employment to-day--when the theater is at its best, and half the world play-goers--precarious for capital and industry; but in those days an experiment, in every { }sense of the word), who succeeded by vigilance, exact accounting, business sagacity, and prudence, in securing and saving not only a competency, but a fair fortune; in the mean time--while engaged in this engrossment of business--writing isabella's magnificent appeal to the duke's deputy, angelo; or cardinal wolsey's last soliloquy! or conceive of the man who gave the wife of his youth an old bedstead, and sued a neighbor for malt delivered, penning antony's oration above cæsar, or the soliloquy of macbeth debating the murder of duncan, the invocation to sleep in "king henry iv.," or the speech of prospero, or the myriad sweet, or noble, or tender passages that nothing but a human heart could utter! let him try to conceive this, we say, and his eyes will open to the absurdity of the belief that these lines were written by the lessee and joint-manager of a theater, and he will examine the evidence thereafter for corroboration, and not for conviction; satisfied in his own mind, at least, that no such phenomenon is reasonable, probable, or safe to have presented itself. then, last and greatest difficulty of all, is the will. this is by far the completest and best authenticated record we have of the man william shakespeare, testifying not only to his undoubtedly having lived, but to his character as a man; and--most important of all to our investigation--to his exact worldly condition. here we have his own careful and ante-mortem schedule of his possessions, his chattels real and chattels personal, down to the oldest and most rickety bedstead under his roof. and we may be pretty sure that it is an accurate and exhaustive list. but if he { }were--as well as a late theater-manager and country gentleman--an author and the proprietor of dramas that had been produced and found valuable, how about these plays? were they not of as much value, to say the least, as a damaged bedstead? were they not, as a matter of fact, not only invaluable, but the actual source of his wealth? how does he dispose of them? does our thrifty shakespeare forget that he has written them? is it not the fact, and is it not reason and common sense to conceive, that, _not_ having written them, they have passed out of his possession along with the rest of his theatrical property, along with the theater whose copyrights they were, and into the hands of others? this is the greatest difficulty and stumbling-block for the shakespeareans. if their hero had written these plays, of which the age of elizabeth was so fond, and in whose production he had amassed a fortune--that he should have left a will, in items, in which absolutely no mention or hint of them whatever should be made, even their most zealous pundits can not step over, and so are scrupulous not to allude to it at all. this piece of evidence is unimpeachable and conclusive as to what worldly goods, chattels, chattel-interests, or things in action, william shakespeare supposed that he would die possessed of. tradition is gossip. records are scant and niggardly. contemporary testimony is conflicting and shallow, but here, attested in due and sacred form, clothed with the foreshadowed solemnity of another world, is the calm, deliberate, ante mortem statement of the man himself. we perceive what becomes of his secondhand bedstead. what becomes of his plays? is it possible that, after all these years' experience of their { }value--in the disposition of a fortune of which they had been the source and foundation--he should have forgotten their very existence? but if, diverging from the scanty records, we go to the testimony of contemporaries, what do we find there? very little more of the man william shakespeare, but precisely the same dilemma as to his alleged authorship of the plays. we find that the country lad william, the village prodigy with whom the gossips concerned themselves, was no milksop and no joseph; that he was hail-fellow with his fellows of equal age; that he poached--shot his neighbors' deer; lampooned their owner when punished for the offense; went on drinking-bouts with his equals of the neighboring villages; and, finally---just as any clever, country lad, who had made his fellows merry with mock eulogies over the calves he slaughtered might and probably would do to-day, and which is precisely what his earliest and, therefore, safest biographer, howe, asserts that he did do--wound up with following a company of strolling players to the metropolis; where he began his prosperous career by holding gentlemen's horses at the theater door, while the gentlemen themselves went inside to witness the performance. we turn to the stories of the poaching, the deer-shooting, and the beer-drinking, with relief. it is pleasant to think that the pennywise old man was--at least in his youth--human. a little poaching and a little beer do nobody any harm, and it is, at all events, more cheerful reading than the record of a parsimonious freeholder taking the law of his poorer neighbor who defaults in the payment of a few shillings for a handful of malt. { }there is a village school in stratford, and mr. de-quincy, and all his predecessors and successors who have preferred to construct pretty romances, and call them "lives of william shakespeare," rather than to accept his known and recorded youth, boldly unite in making their hero attend its sessions. their assertions are bravely seconded by the cicerones and local guides of stratford, who, for a sixpence, will show you the identical desk which shakespeare, the lad, occupied at that grammar school; and at shottery, the same guides show us the chair in which our hero sat while courting mistress anne; just as, in wittemburg, these same gentry point out the house where hamlet lived when a student in the university there; or, in scotland, the spot where fitz-james and roderick dhu fought. but, william could not have attended this school very perseveringly, since he turns up in london at about the age that country lads first go to school. in london, he seems to have risen from nothing at all to the position (such as it is) of co-manager, along with a dozen others, of a theater. here, just as young lords and swells take theater managers into their acquaintance to-day, he became intimate with greater men than himself, and so enlarged his skirts and his patronage, as it was the part of a thrifty man to do. at this time there were no circulating libraries in london, no libraries, accessible to the general public, of any sort, in fact; no booksellers at every corner, no magazines or reviews; no public educators, and no schools or colleges swarming with needy students; even the literature of the age was a bound-up book to all except professional readers. but, for all that, this william shakes-{ }peare--this vagrom runaway youth, who, after a term at stratford school (admitting that he went where the romancers put him), cuts off to london at the heels of a crew of strolling players--who begins business for himself somewhere (perhaps as "link-boy" at a theater door, but we may be sure, at an humble end of some employment) and, by saving his pence, works up to be actually a part-proprietor in two theaters, and ultimately a rich man--begins to possess himself of a lore and knowledge of the past which, even to-day, with all our libraries, lyceums, serials, and booksellers, it would need a lifetime to acquire. he did the work of a lifetime. like mr. stewart, in new york, he began penniless, and by vigilance, shrewdness, and economy, rose to respectability, affluence, and fortune. but, as we could not imagine mr. stewart, gentleman as he was, writing all the tags and labels on his goods or making with his own hand every pen-stroke necessary in the carrying on of his immense trade; or poems or philosophical essays on the manufacture of the silks and linens and cottons he handled while slowly coining his fortune, and revolving poetry in his overworked brain while overseeing the business that was evolving that fortune; so do we fail to conceive of william shakespeare doing all the pen-work on the dramas he coins his money by producing on his boards. how much less can we conceive of this man composing, not only poems of his own, but a literature of his own--drawing his material from the classic writers (and notably from those greek plays not at that time translated, and only accessible in the originals and in { }manuscript), from legal works, "caviare to the general;" from philosophical treatises not known to have been available even for reference; writing of the circulation of the blood in the human system--a fact not discovered until years after his own death! let us find him, too, setting down, in writing, epitomes of all known wisdom; ascertaining the past, prophesying of the future; laying down off-hand the philosopher's, the lawyer's, the leech's, the soldier's, the scholar's craft and art, which only these themselves, by long years of study, might attain to--and all this while coining a fortune in the management of two theaters; to have solved, in short, the riddle of the sphinx and all the as yet unspinning whirligigs of time! verily, a greater riddle than the sphinx's is this the riddle of the boy--master shakespeare. thomas chatterton found his wealth in a musty chest in an old muniment room. but here the chest and imminent room were not in existence till years after the boy shakespeare has been a man, and traveled on to his grave. it is no solution of this riddle to say the lad was a genius, and that genius is that which soars, while education plods. * * this class of evidence can not be recapitulated in the space of a foot note, but the curious reader will do well to refer to the chapter on the attainments of the author of shakespeare, at pages - holmes's "authorship of shakespeare," third edition. genius itself can not account for the shakespearean plays. genius may portray, but here is a genius that not only portrayed that which after his death became fact, but related other facts which men had forgotten; the actors in which had lain in the dust for centuries, and whose records had slept sealed in dead languages, in manuscripts beyond his reach! genius, intuition, { }is beyond education indeed. it may prophesy of the future or conceive of the eternal; but only knowledge can draw record of the past. if the author of shakespeare had been a genius only, his "julius cæsar" might have been a masterpiece of tragedy, or pathos, or of rage; but it would have portrayed an ideal rome, not the real one. his "comedy of errors" might have been matchless in humor and sparkling in contretemps, but, three years afterward, on translating a hidden manuscript of plautus, the comedies would not have been found quite identical in argument. * * viz: with the menæchmiof plautus. in "pericles," allusion is made to a custom obtaining among a certain undiscussable class of cyprians, which it is fair to say could not be found mentioned in a dozen books of which we know the names to-day, and which, from its very nature, is treated of in no encyclopaedia or manual of information, or of popular antiquities. how could any one but an antiquarian scholar, in those days, have possessed himself--not in this alone, but in a thousand similar instances--of such minute, accurate, and occult information? the precocity of a child may be intuitive. but no babe learns its alphabet spontaneously or by means of its genius; but out of a book, because the characters are arbitrary. pascal, when a child, discovered the eternal principles of geometry, and marked them out in chalk upon the floor; but he did not know that the curved figures he drew were called "circles," or that the straight ones were called "lines;" so he named them "rounds" and "bars." he discovered what was immutable and could be found by the searcher, but his genius could not reinvent arbitrary language that had been invented before his birth. in short, to have possessed and to have written down, in advance, the learning and philosophy of three centuries to come, { }might have been the gift of prophecy (such a gift as has ere this fallen from we know not where upon the sons of men) descending into the soul of a conceivable, genius. but who can tell of more than he knows? second sight is not retrospective. and to have testified of the forgotten past, without access to its record, was as beyond the possibilities of genius as the glowing wealth of the shakespearean page is above the creation of an unlettered man of business in the age of elizabeth or of victoria. here is the dilemma with which the shakespear-eans struggle: that in those years the man william shakespeare _did_ live, and was a theatrical manager and actor in london; and precisely the same evidence which convinces us that this man did live in those days, convinces the world to-day--or must convince it, if it will only consent to look at it--that the dramas we call shakespearean were so called because they were first published from the stage of william shakespeare's theaters in london, just as we call certain readings of the classics the "delphin classics," because brought together for a dauphin of prance; or certain paintings "düsseldorf paintings," because produced in the düsseldorf school. if, however, in the course of ages it should come to be believed that the dauphin wrote the classics, or that a man named düsseldorf painted the pictures, even then the time would come to set the world right. if there had been no dauphin and no düsseldorf, we might have assigned those names to a power which might have produced the poems or the pictures. if there had been no william shakespeare, we might easily have idealized one who could have written the plays. but, unhap{ }pily, there was the actual, living, breathing man in possession of that name, who declines to assign it to another, and who is any thing but the sort of man the shakespeareans want. and, moreover, once the presumption is waived and the question is opened again; there is a mass of evidence in the possession of this century, which, taken piecemeal, can be separately waived aside, but which, when cumulated and heaped together, is a mountain over which the airiest skeptic can not vault. but did none of william shakespeare's contemporaries suspect the harmless deception? there is no proof at hand, nor any evidence at all positive, that the intimates of the manager understood him to be, or to have ever pretended to have been, the original author of the text of the plays he gave to his players. let us hasten to do william shakespeare the justice to say that we can find nowhere any testimony to his having asserted a falsehood. but, if he did so pretend to his intimates, and if the dramas we now call "shakespearean" were actually produced, in those days, on william shakespeare's own stage, under that pretension, certainly some of them must have wagged their heads in secret. surely, ben johnson, who bears testimony that his friend shakespeare had "small latin and less greek," must have queried a little within himself as to where certain things he read in the text of his friend's plays came from, always supposing that he did not know perfectly well where they _did_ come from. it seems more than probable, as we have already said, that, whoever suspected or knew the source of the plays, and who also knew, if such was the fact, that they were claimed as shakespeare's compositions { }--had more cue to wink at than to expose the humbug. we find, indeed, that one, robert greene, by name, did protest against "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers," (i. e. a borrower and adapter of other men's work, pretending to be a dramatist when he was not), "that, with his tygres heart wrapt in a player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, beeing an absolute johannes factotum, is in his owne conceyt the only shake-scene in a countrey." that is to say, in language more intelligible at this day, that, being a sort of jack-of-all-trades around the theater--holding horses, taking tickets, acting a little, putting pieces on the stage, and writing out their parts for the actors--he (shakespeare) came in time to consider himself a dramatist, a manager, and a tragedian, all in one. doubtless greene was inspired by jealousy--for he was a writer of plays for the stage himself--in making and publishing this sneer. but, as he was endeavoring to make his remarks so personal to shakespeare as to be readily recognized, he would not have alluded to him except by some well-known characteristic. so he calls him a "jack-of-all-trades," that is, a man who did a little of everything. is a jack-of-all-trades about a theater the ideal poet, philosopher, and seer, who wrote the shakespearean drama--the ideal of the sliakespeareans? according to the chronicles and the record, then, one william shakespeare, a "general utility" actor, and _johannes factotum_, lived and thrived in london, some two hundred and fifty odd years ago. at about that date a book is likewise written. who are these who find this book, and make this man to fit it? { }verily, there are none so blind as those who are determined not to see! to have written that book one must needs have been, let us say--for he was at least all these--a philosopher, a poet, a lawyer, a leech, a naturalist, a traveler, a student of bible history! strange to say, at the time this book--in portions--is making its appearance, there are two men living, each of whom is a poet, a philosopher, a student of laws and of physics, and a traveler over the by-ways of many lands beside his own. one of them is known to have read the bible, then what we understand to-day by a "current work." together, these two men possess in themselves about all of their age with which subsequent ages care to connect themselves. but it is not suggested that these two men, bacon and raleigh, might have written the book for which an author is wanted. we are to pass them by, and sift the dust at their illustrious feet, if haply we may find a fetich to fall down before and worship! must the man that wrote the dramas have visited italy? mr. halliwell and others inform us of shakespeare's visit to verona, venice, and florence. must shakespeare have been at the bar? my lord campbell writes us a book to show his familiarity with the science of jurisprudence. (that book has traveled far upon a lordly name. it is an authority until it happens to be read. once we open it, it is only to find that, the passages of the shakespearean dramas which stamp their author's knowledge of the common law are the passages his lordship does not cite, while over the slang and dialect which any smatterer might have memorized from turning the pages of an attorney's hornbook, his lordship gloats and postulates and re{ }lapses into ecstasy). must shakespeare have been a physician? there have not been wanting the books to prove him that. * and, crowning this long misrule of absurdity, comes an authority out of philadelphia, to assure us that the youth shakespeare, on quitting his virgin stratford for the metropolis, was scrupulous to avoid the glittering temptations of london; that he eschewed wine and women; that he avoided the paths of vice and immorality, and piously kept himself at home, his only companion being the family bible, which he read most ardently and vigorously! ** * "the medical acquirement of shakespeare." by c. w. stearns, m. d. new york, . shakespeare's medical knowledge. by dr. bucknill. london. . ** "shakespeare and the bible." by john bees, etc., etc. philadelphia: claxton, remsen & haffelfinger, . we commend to readers of this paper this latest authority, and can not forbear noting a few of his "discoveries." mr. rees has found out (p. ) not only that william shakespeare wrote the lines-- "-------not a hair perished, on their sustaining garments not a blemish, but fresher than before." ("the tempest," i. ) but that he took them from deuteronomy viii. . and in acts xxvii. : there shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you. in which the parallelism is in the word hair!!! or, again (p. ) that the lines: though they are of monstrous shape,... their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our human generation you shall find many, nay, almost any ("the tempest," iii. ), are taken from the following: in the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously,... who also honored us with many honors; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary.--(acts xxviii. - . in which--unless it be in the fact that one of these passages is in an act and the other in acts--the reader must find the parallelism for himself, without assistance from mr. rees. shakespeare, mr. rees tells us, never neglected his bible, because (p. ) "he was indebted to one whose love added a bright charm to the holy passages she taught him to read and study--to his mother was shakespeare indebted for early lessons of piety, and a reverence for a book from whose passages in afterlife he wove himself a mantle of undying fame!" it is to be hoped, for charity's sweet sake, that his latest authority has truth for his color and testimony { }for his oil. the picture has at least the freshness and charm of utter novelty! the work of shakespeare-making goes on. the facts are of record. we may ran as we read them! but rather let us, out of reverence for the errors of our fathers, refuse to read at all, and accept the ideal of malone, of halliwell and de quincy, of grant white, and of ten thousand more, who prefer to write their biographies of william shakespeare, not in the first person, like baron munchhausen, nor in the second person, like the memoirs of sully, but in the probable and supposititious person of "it is possible he did _this_," and "it is likely he did _that._" let those who will, disparage the boy and man william shakespeare, who married and made an honest woman of anne hathaway of shottery; left home to earn his own living rather than be a drain on the slender household store; used his first wealth to make a gentleman of his father; and who, with what followed, purchased himself a home on his boyhood's { }banks, where--"procul negotiis"--in the evening of life he might enjoy the well-won fruits of early toil. but that he ever claimed, much less wrote, what we call the shakespearean drama, let those bring proof who can. { } part ii. the appeal to history. [illustration: ] ut, having taken the liberty of doubting whether--as matter of record--one william shakespeare, of stratford town, in england, sometime part-proprietor of the globe and blackfriars theaters in london, could have very well been himself and the author of what are known popularly to-day as "the plays of shakespeare," although there seemed to be ground for supposing that he might have cast them into something of the acting form they possess as preserved to us; and having come to the conclusion that--once this presumption is lifted--all the evidence procurable as to the life and times of the actual william shakespeare is actually evidence cumulative to the truth of the proposition as to the record: let us proceed to inquire whether--on review--a case rested on this evidence can be rebutted by those certain considerations and matters, by way of rejoinder, which are stereotype and safe to come to the surface whenever these waters are troubled--which whoever ventures to canvass the possibilities of an extra shakesperean authorship of the dramas can so infallibly anticipate. granted that the shakespeare will does not prove the testator oblivious of his own copyrights or rights in the nature of copyrights; granted that the story of the deer-stealing was actual invention and not merely { }rejected by the shakespereans, because conceived to be unworthy of the image they set up; granted that the fact of the circulation of the blood was a familiar fact in the days of william shakespeare; that the "menæchmi" of plautus; that iago's speech in "othello" and the stanza of berni's _orlando innamorato_ were mere coincidences; or, better yet, admit that there was an english version of the italian poem in shakespeare's day *--admit, if required--that the "hamlet" of saxo, had been translated; that the law in "the * when iago utters the often quoted lines, "who steals my purse steals trash, etc.," he but repeats, with little variation, this stanza of the _orlando innamorato_ of which poem, to this day, there is no english version. "chi ruba un corno un cavallo, un anello e simil cose, ha qualcha discrezione, e patrebbe chimarsi ladroneello; ma quel ehe ruba la reputazione e de l'altrai patiehe si fa bello, si puo chiamare assassino e ladrone; e tanto piu del dover trapassa il segno?" as no english translation has been made of the orlando innamorato, i must ask the reader who can not command the original to be content with this rendering of the above stanza: "the man who steals a horn, a horse, a ring, or such a trifle, thieves with moderation, and may be justly called a robberling; but he who takes away a reputation and pranks in feathers from another's wing his deed is robbery--assassination, and merits punishment so much the greater as he to right and truth is more a traitor." shakespeare, by r. g. white, vol. i, p. . ** of saxo grammaticus, the danish historian from whom the plot of the "hamlet" was taken, whalley says, writing in , that "no translation hath yet been made," must have been read by the writer of "hamlet" in the original. "an enquiry into the learning of shakespeare," etc. by peter whalley, a. b., fellow of st. john's college, london. printed for j. waller at the crown and mitre, --and see a suggestion that the "hamlet" came from germany, in a pamphlet "on the double personality of the hamlet of saxo grammaticus, the hamlet of shakespeare. its relation to the german hamlet." by dr. latham, royal society of literature transactions. . also, "shakespeare in germany. alfred cohn. berlin and london. . { }"merchant of venice" was "venetian" instead of "crowner's quest" jaw; admit that william shakespeare "had the advantages in school of something more than the mere rudiments of learning;" admit that "his devotion to his family drove him forth from the rural seclusion of stratford into the battle of the great world;" that the immortal gift of the second-best bed was, (we quote from mr. grant white, who is apparently willing to sacrifice anybody's reputation if he can thereby prove his william to have been a prodigy of virtue no less than of genius), explained by the fact that, at the time of the hurried marriage, a husband had to be provided for mistress hathaway without loss of time, and that little susannah was as much of a surprise to william as to any body--in other words, that anne was "no better than she should be," (oblivious of the fact that "the premature susannah" was william shakespeare's favorite child; that he, at least, never doubted her paternity, for he left her the bulk of his fortune in his will);or even that--according to steevens, that testamentary second thought was actually "a mark of rare confidence and devotion;" granted all these--if they have anything to do with the question--and a dozen more, and we only attenuate, by the exact value of these, { }the mountain of probability, nothing less than the complete dilapidation and disappearance of which could leave room for substitution, in the stead of the probability, the _possibility_ of such a suspension of the laws of nature as is required by the shakespearean theorists. for, as we have said, the evidence is cumulative, and, therefore, no more to be waived or disposed of by doubts as to, or even the dispelment of, this or that or the other item--or disintegration of this or that or the other block--of evidence than the coliseum has been wiped away and disposed of because its coping has crumbled, or because, for some centuries, the petty roman princes built their palaces from its debris. and we may as well remark that, just here, it is always in order to mention archbishop whately's "historic doubts." we wish some of the gentlemen who cite it so glibly, would take the trouble to read that clever little book. it is a logical, not a whimsical effort. it was intended by its author as an answer to "hume's essay on miracles." hume's argument being, in the opinion of the archbishop, reducible to the proposition that miracles were impossible because they were improbable, his lordship wrote his little work to show that the history of napoleon was actually most improbable, and, written of feigned characters, would read like the most extravagant fable. surely it can not be necessary to reiterate the difference between the archbishop's brochure and the proposition of "the shakspearean myth!" the one was the argument from improbability, applied to facts in order to show its dangerous and altogether vicious character. the other is the demonstration { }that history--that the record--when consulted, is directly fatal to a popular impression, and directly contradictory of a presumption, born of mere carelessness and accident, and allowed to gather weight by mere years and lapse of time. but, for the sake of the argument, let us leave the discussion, for the moment, just where it stands, and take still bolder ground. instead of sifting evidence and counting witnesses, let us assume that, when we painted william shakspeare--who lived between the years and --as an easy-going rural wag, with a rural wit, thereafter to be sharpened by catering to the "gods" of a city theater; a poacher on occasion, and scapegrace generally in his youth, who chose the life of "a vagabond by statute"--i. e. a strolling player--but who turned up in london, and found his way into more profitable connection with a permanent play-house; and, in his advancing years, became thrifty, finally sordid--we had only taken the liberty of conceiving, like every other who ever wrote on a shakespearean theme, yet one more william shakespeare; so that, instead of ten thousand william shakespeares, no two of which were identical, there were now ten thousand and one! admitting _that,_ the next question would of necessity be--and such an investigation as the present must become utterly valueless if prosecuted with bias or with substitution of personal opinion for historical fact--whose william shakespeare is probably most a likeness of the true william shakespeare, who _did_ wander from stratford to london, who _did_ sojourn there, and who _did_ wander back { }again to stratford, and there was gathered to his fathers, in the year ? the popular william shakespeare, built to fit the plays, is a masterless philosopher, a matchless poet, a student of greek manuscripts and classic manners, of southern romance and northern sagas, a traveler and a citizen of the world, a scientist, a moralist, a master of statecraft, and skilled in all the graces and amenities of courtly society! which of these two portraits is nearest to the life? let us take an appeal to history. there appears to be but one way to go about to discover; that way is to appeal to the truth of history; to go as nearly back as we can get to the lifetime of the actual man we are after, and inquire, wherever a trace of him can be touched, what manner of man he was. how, it happens that the very nearest we can come to an eye-witness as to the personnel of william shakespeare is the reverend john ward, vicar of stratford, who wrote in that town a diary or memoranda, between february, , and april, , say forty-seven years after william shakespeare's death. the following meager references to his late fellow-townsman are all (except an entry to the effect that he had two daughters, etc.; and another memorandum, "remember to peruse shakespeare's plays, etc.,) thought worth while by dominie ward, viz: "i have heard that mr. shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all; he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days he lived at stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for that he had an allowance so large that { }he spent at the rate of £ , a year, as i have heard." "shakespeare, drayton, and ben jonson had a merrie meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for shakespeare died of a feaver there contracted." next, chronologically, we come to a gentleman named aubrey. this mr. aubrey was himself a native of warwickshire; was born in --that is, eleven years after shakespeare died. he entered gentleman commoner of trinity college, oxford, and so, presumably, was no puritan. he was considerable of a scholar himself, and was esteemed, we are told, a latin poet of no mean abilities, he was admitted a barrister of the inner temple in ; and so, a scholar, a poet, and a lawyer, might presumably know the difference between a wag and a genius. his manuscripts are preserved in the ashmolean museum. he gives an account of his fellow-countyman, and, coming as it does, next to dominie ward's, nearer to the lifetime of william shakespeare than any chronicle extant, (malone admits it was not written later than ), we give it entire: "mr. william shakespeare was born at stratford-upon-avon, in the county of warwick. his father was a butcher, and i have been told heretofore by some of his neighbours that, when he was a boy, he exercised his father's trade; but when he killed a calfe he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. there was, at this time, another butcher's son in that towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but died young. this wm. being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to london, i guess about eighteen, { }and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well. (now b. jonson never was a good actor, but an excellent instructor.) he began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very lowe, and his plays took well. he was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a verie redie and pleasant smooth witt. the humour of the constable in 'a midsummer night's dream,' he happened to take at gremlon, in bucks, * which is the road from london to stratford, and there was living that constable, about , when i first came to oxon. mr. jos. howe is of that parish, and knew him. * aubrey says, in a note at this place: "i think it was a midsummer's night that he happened there. but there is no constable in 'midsummer night's dream.'" aubrey probably intended reference to dogberry, in the "much ado." ben jonson and he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came. one time, as he was at stratford-upon-avon, one combes, an old rich usurer, was to be buryed; he makes there this extemporary epitaph:= ```ten in the hundred the devil allows, ```but combes will have twelve, he swears and vows. ```if any one asks who lies in this tomb, ```"hoh," quoth the devil, "'tis my john a combe!"= he was wont to go to his native country once a year. i think i have been told that he left £ or £ a year, or thereabouts, to a sister. i have heard sir william davenant and mr. thomas shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say that he had a most prodigious witt, and did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramaticall writers. he was { }wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life; says ben jonson, 'i wish he had blotted out a thousand.' his comedies will remain witt as long as the english tongue is understood, for that he handles _mores hominum_: how our present writers reflect much upon particular persons and coxcombites that twenty years hence they will not be understood. though, as ben jonson says of him, that he had but little latin and less greek, he understood latin pretty well, for he had been, in his younger days, a school-master in the country." * * aubrey's mss. was called "minutes of lives," and was addressed to his "worthy friend mr. anthony wood, antiquary of oxford." a letter to wood, dated june , , accompanied it, in which aubrey says: "'t is a task that i never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me, saying that i was fit for it by reason of my general acquaintance, having now not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have also been much tumbled up and down in it, which hath made me so well known. besides the modern advantage of coffee-houses, before which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations or societies, i might add that i come of a long-aevious race, by which means i have wiped some feathers off the wings of time for several generations, which does reach high." imagine this as the record of a real "shakespeare!" could we imagine it as the record of a milton? let us conceive of a fellow-countryman of john milton's, a college-bred man and a latin poet, saying of the author of "paradise lost;" "he was a goodish-looking sort of man, wore his hair long, was a clerk, or secretary, or something to cromwell, or some of his gang; had some trouble with his wife; was blind, as i have heard; or, perhaps, it was deaf he was." and conceive of this, a few years after milton's death being { }actually all the information accessible concerning him! but to continue our search in the vicinage. on the th day of april, (thirteen years later), a visitor to warwickshire wrote a letter to his cousin, describing, among other points of interest, the village and church of stratford-upon-avon. and, as the letter was discovered among the papers of a well-known nobleman, addressed to a person known to have lived, and indorsed by this latter, "from mr. dowdall; description of several places in warwickshire"--as it bears on its face evidence of its genuineness, and, above all, mentions william shakespeare, precisely in the same strain that it alludes to other worthies of the county--the beauchamps, the nevilles, etc.--it has always been accepted as authentic. after a description of the tomb and resting place of "our english tragedian, mr. shakespeare," the writer continues: "the clerk that showed me this church was above eighty years old. * he says that this shakespeare was formerly of this town, bound apprentice to a butcher; but that he ran from his master to london, and there { }was received into the play-house as a servitour, and by this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards proved. he was the best of his family, but the male line is extinguished. not one, for fear of the curse abovesaid, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him." * i.e. (more than "above" three years old when she died.) this letter was among the papers of lord declifford, which were sold by auction--and was purchased by mr. rodd, a well- known antiquarian bookseller, of great newport street, london, in . mr. rodd printed it in pamphlet form in (at least the copy we have bears imprint of that year). it is dated "butler's merston in warwickshire, april, the th, ;" is signed, "your very faithful kinsman and most aff'te humble serv't till death, john at stiles," and is addressed, "these for mr. southwell, pr. serv't." this is mr. edward southwell, and the letter is indorsed in his handwriting, "from mr. dowdall. description of several places in warwickshire." mr. rodd says that the writer was "an inns'-of-court-man." next, chronologically, comes the contribution preserved to us by a reverend richard davies, rector of sapperton, * in gloucestershire. the reverend william fulman, who died in , bequeathed certain of his biographical collections to this reverend davies. davies died in , leaving many annotations to his friend's manuscripts. among these annotations he writes the following of william shakespeare: "william shakespeare was born at stratford upon avon, in warwickshire, about - , much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from sir lucy, who had him oft whipt, and some times imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country to his great advancement. but his revenge was so great that he is his 'justice clodpate' ** and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for his arms. from an actor he became a composer. he died april , , aetat fifty-three, probably at stratford--for there he is buried, and hath a monument (dugd.) * his ms. additions to the mss. of the rev. william fulman (in which the allusion to shakespeare is made) are all in the library of corpus christ! college, oxford. ** probably a reference to justice shallow, in "merry wives of windsor." p. . { }on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shall remove his bones. he died a papist. whatever these may be worth--for, of course, like the rest, they are mere second-hand and hearsay--it is fair to include them in a collection of what the law calls "general reputation," "general report," or "common fame," and it is fair to offset this collection, at least, against that "common fame" and "common reputation" which has grown up during the last hundred years or so concerning william shakespeare, which is so unboundedly to his glory and renown. much later along, we are made acquainted, too, with a tradition, related by one john jordan, a townsman of stratford, (who was known in the days of malone and the ireland forgeries as "the stratford poet,") who claimed to have succeeded in the line of descent to a tradition of an alleged drinking-bout of shakespeare and others (as representing stratford) against the champions of pebworth, marston, hillborough, grafton, wixford, broom, and bidford, in which william was so worsted that his legs refused to carry him farther homeward than a certain thorn-tree, thereafter to come in for its share of worshipful adoration from the shakespearean sticklers. but the tradition is of no value except as additional testimony to the impression of his boon companions, associates, and contemporaries, that william shakespeare was a jolly dog who loved his frolic, his pot of ale, and his wench--was almost any thing, in short, except the student of history, antiquity, and classic manners, no less than the scholar of his own times, that he has been created since by those who knew him not. nothing travels faster in rural communities, as we { }have remarked, than a reputation for "book-learning;" let us continue our search for shakespeare's. when an interest in the shakespearean drama began to assert itself, and people began to inquire who wrote it, not a step could they get beyond the rev. john ward, richard davies, and aubrey. at the outset they ran full against this village "ne'er-do-weel" and rustic wag, who worked down into a man of thrift, made money off his theatrical shares and properties in london, and spent it royally in stratford, drinking himself into his grave some seven years before the first collection of what the world in time was to credit him with, (but improved and enlarged beyond what it ever was in his day) the shakes-perean drama--first saw the light. perhaps dominie ward may have been dazzled by the open house of the richest man in town. a thousand pounds a year is an income very rarely enjoyed by poets, and, we think, more easily accounted for by interests in tithes and outlying lands in stratford, than by the "two plays a year," in and about the days when from four to eight pounds was the price of an acting play (according to philip henslow, a sort of stage pawnbroker and padrone of those days, who kept many actors in his pay, and whose diary or cash book, in which he entered his disbursements and receipts, is still extant), and twenty pounds a sum commanded only by masters. the prodigality which dazed the simple stratford dominie was easily paid for, no doubt, by something less than the income named; and such an income, too, would tally with william shakespeare's own estimate of his worldly goods in his will. but the statement is the nearest and best evidence { }we have at hand, and so let it he accepted. and so, running up against this william shakespeare, these commentators were obliged to stop. but there were the dramas, and there was the name "william shakespeare" tacked to them; it was william shakespeare they were searching for; and, since the william shakespeare they had found, was evidently not the one they wanted, they straightway began to construct one more suitable. the marvelous silence of history and local tradition only stimulated them, they must either confess that there was no such man, or make one; they preferred to make one. first (for rowe has only--in his eight honest pages of biographical notice--narrated certain gossip or facts, on the authority, perhaps, of betterton, and does not claim to be an explorer, and heminges and condell, who edited the first folio, made no biographical allusion whatever) came edmund malone. with the nicest and most painstaking care he sifted every morsel and grain of testimony, overturned histories, chronicles, itineraries, local tradition, and report--but in vain. the nearer he came to the stratford "shaughraun," the further away he got from a matchless poet and an all-mastering student. but, like those that were to come after him, instead of accepting the situation, and confessing the william shakespeare who lived at stratford not mentionable in the same breath with the producer of the august text which had inspired his search, he preferred to rail and marvel at the stupidity of the neighborhood, and the sins of the chroniclers who could so overlook prodigies. far from concluding that--because he finds no such name as william shakespeare in the national walhalla--{ }therefore no such name belonged there, he assumes, rather, that the walhalla builders do not understand their business. he says: "that almost a century should have elapsed from the time of his [william shakespeare's] death, without a single attempt having been made to discover any circumstance which could throw a light on the history of his life or literary career,... are circumstances which can not be contemplated without astonishment. *... sir william dugdale, born in , and educated at the school of coventry, twenty miles from stratford-upon-avon, and whose work, 'the antiquities of warwickshire,' appeared in , only thirty years after the death of our poet, we might have expected to give some curious memorials of his illustrious countryman. but he has not given us a single particular of his private life, contenting himself with a very slight mention of him in his account of the church and tombs of stratford-upon-avon. * malone's "life:" "plays and poems," london, , vol. ii, p. . * ibid., p. . the next biographical printed notice that i have found is in fuller's 'worthies,' folio, ; in 'warwickshire,' page --where there is a short account of our poet, furnishing very little information concerning him. and again, neither winstanley, in his 'lives of the poets,' vo, ; langbaine in ; blount in ; gibbon in --add anything to the meager accounts of bug-dale and fuller. that anthony wood, who was himself a native of oxford, and was born but fourteen years after the death of our author, should not { }have collected any anecdotes of shakespeare, has always appeared to me extraordinary. though shakespeare has no direct title to a place in the 'athenæ oxoniensis,' that diligent antiquary could easily have found a niche for his life as he has done for many others not bred at oxford. the life of davenant afforded him a very fair opportunity for such an insertion." the difficulty was, that mr. malone was searching among the poets for one by the name of william shakespeare, when there was no such name among the poets; he found him not, because he was not there. he might with as much propriety have searched for the name of grimaldi in the poets' corner, or for homer's on the books of the worshipful society of patten-makers. to be sure, in writing up stratford church, sir william dugdale can not very well omit mention of the tomb of shakespeare, any more than a writer who should set out to make a guide-book of westminster abbey could omit description of the magnificent tomb of john smith. but in neither the case of dugdale nor in that of the cicerone of the abbey is the merit of the tomb a warrant for the immortality of the entombed. it is, possibly, worth our while to pause just here, and contemplate the anomaly the shakespeareans would have us accept--would have us to swallow, or rather bolt, with our eyes shut--namely, the spectacle (to mix the metaphor) of the mightiest genius the world has ever borne upon its surface, living utterly unappreciated and unsuspected, going in and out among his fellows in a crowded city of some two hundred thousand inhabitants, among whom were { }certain master spirits whose history we have intact to-day, and whose record we can possess ourselves of with no difficulty--without making any impression on them, or imprint on the chronicles of the time, except as a clever fellow, a fair actor (with a knack, besides, at a little of every thing), so that in a dozen years he is forgotten as if he had never been; and--except that a tourist, stumbling upon a village church, finds his name on a stone--passed beyond the memory of a man in less than the years of a babe! the blind old homer at least was known as a poet where he was known at all; the seven cities which competed for the tradition of his birth when criticism revealed the merit of his song--though he might have begged his bread in their streets--at least did not take him for a tinker! it is not that the shakespearean dramas were not recognized as immortal by the generation of their composer that is the miracle; neither were the songs of homer. perhaps, so far as experience goes, this is rather the rule than the exception. the miracle is, that in all the world of london and of england nobody knew that there _was_ any shakespeare, in the very days when the drama we hold so priceless now was being publicly rendered in a play-house, and printed--as we shall come to consider further on--for the benefit of non-theater-goers! but, it is said, the great fire of london intervened and burned up all the records--that is how we happen to have no records of the immortal shakespeare. then, again, there is the lapse of time--the ordinary wear and tear of centuries, and the physical changes of the commercial center of the world. but how { }about edmund spenser? that we have his poetry and the record of his life, is certain. or, how about chaucer? did the great fire of london affect his chronicle and his labors? the records of horace, and maro, of lucretius, of juvenal, and terence, had more than a great fire of london to contend with. but they have survived the ruin of empires and the crash of thrones, the conflagrations of libraries and the scraping of palimpsests. and yet the majesty and might of the shakespearean page, how greater than horatius or maro, than juvenal and terence! if it all were a riddle, we could not read it. but it is not a riddle. it is the simplest of facts--the simple fact that the compilers of the shakespearean pages worked anonymously, and concealed their identity so successfully that it lay hidden for three hundred years, and defies even the critical acumen, the learning and the research of this nineteenth century. but to return to edmund malone. he is not deterred by his failure to find a poet of the name of shakespeare. determined that a poet of that name there shall be, and not being at hand, he proceeds--and he has the credit of being the first to undertake the task--to construct an immortal bard. and a very pretty sort of fellow he turns out, too!--one that, with such minor variations as have, from time to time, suggested themselves to gentlemen of a speculative turn of mind, has been a standard immortal william all along. for they who seek will find. had mr. malone searched for the stratford "shaughraun," who ran off and became an actor (as capably respectable a profession as any other, for the man makes the profession, and not the profession the man); who revis{ }ited his native haunts--on the lookout, not for king's and cardinals, not for dukes and thanes and princes--but for clowns and drunkards and misers to dovetail in among the hamlets and othellos that passed under his adapting pen; * had he searched for the { }stratford' butcher's son, who was the stratford wag as well, and who never slaughtered a sheep without making a speech to his admiring fellow-villagers, here he was at his hand. * it is as curious as suggestive to find that the prologue and choruses of the "henry v." and "henry viii." are apologies for the imperfections of the plots, and the folly of the multitude they catered to. as to the internal testimony of the authorship of these compositions, any reader can judge for himself. we have expressed our own opinion as being that william shakespeare might be credited with the characters of nym and bar-dolph; especially of the corporal, whose part consists of the phrase, "there's the humor of it," intruded at each convenient interval; and it is possible that shakespeare, in fitting up the matter in hand, interpolated this as the reigning by-word of the moment. there seems to be reason for believing that this expression did happen to be a favorite at about that time; and that shakespeare was not the only one who rang the changes on it as a season to stage material. witness the following: cob. nay, i have my rheum, and i can be angry as well as another, sir! cash. thy rheum, cob? thy humor, thy humor! thou mistak'st. cob. humor? mack, i think it be so indeed! what is that humor? some rare thing, i warrant. cash. marry, i tell thee, cob, it is a gentlemanlike monster, bred in the special gallantry of our time by affectation, and fed by folly. cob. how must it be fed? cash. oh, aye; humor is nothing if it be not fed. didst thou never hear that? it's a common phrase, "feed thy humor." every man in his humor, iii. . couldst thou not but arrive most acceptable chiefly to such as had the happiness daily to see how the poor innocent word was racked and tortured. every man out of his humor. "humor" was, it would seem by this, the over-used and abused word of these times; just as for example "awful" might be said to be an over-used and abused word during our own times. but he was searching, not for a butcher's son, but for a poet--for a courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,= ````the expectancy and rose of the fair state, ````the glass of fashion and the mold of form, ````the observed of all observers"--= for "an amazing genius which could pervade all nature at a glance, and to whom nothing within the limits of the universe appeared to be unknown;" * and his instinct should have assured him that.--however the works which such a genius had left behind him might travel under the name of the butcher's boy--it was not the pen of the butcher-boy that had written them; that the composer of pages "from which, were all the arts and sciences lost, they might be recovered," ** was { }no "jack-of-all-trades," and could not have lived and publicly presented his compositions nightly, year in and year out, in the glare of a metropolis crowded with courtiers, play-goers, and students--in the age and days of bacon and raleigh and elizabeth--unknown save to a handful of his pot-fellows, and faded out of the world, unknown and unnoticed, fading from the memory of men, without the passing of an item in their mouths! * whalley. ** ibid. a curious instance of this familiarity--to be found in the shakespearean dramas--with the least noticed facts of science, and which, so far as we know, has escaped the critics, we might allude to here: in one of jules verne's realistic stories wherein he springs his romantic catastrophes upon scientific phenomena--"michael strogoff"-- he makes michael fall among enemies who sentence him to be blinded. the blinding is to be accomplished with a heated iron, but michael sees his mother at his side, and, tears suffusing his eyes, the heat of the iron is neutralized, and fails to destroy the sight. so, in "king john," act iv., scene , arthur says to hubert: the iron of itself, though heat red-hot, approaching near these eyes would drink my tears and quench his fiery indignation. this may be mere coincidence, but the dramas are crowded with such coincidences, and for that, if for that only, are marvelous. in either case, according to the shakespereans, we have only to go on, for the rest of time, in discovering new truths in nature and facts in science, only to find that the stratford butcher's boy knew all about them three hundred years ago--was familiar with all that we have yet to learn, and that to his unlettered genius our wisdom was to be sheer foolishness. most wonderful of all, this utter ignoring of william shakespeare among the poets, if unjust, provoked no remonstrance from the immediate family or any kin of the stratford lad. either the shakespeares, ardens, and hathaways were wonderfully destitute of family pride, or else the obscurity accorded their connection was perfectly just and proper. no voice of kin or affinity of william shakespeare (at least we may say this with confidence) ever claimed immortality for him; although it can not be said that they had no opportunity, had they wished to do so, for william shakespeare's granddaughter, lady barnard, was alive until ; his sister, joan hart, till ; and his daughters, susannah hall and judith queeny, until . so that dugdale, at least, if not wood and the rest of them, would not have had to go far to confirm any rumors they might have stumbled upon as to the { }acquirements and accomplishments of the man shakespeare; but it seems that not even the partiality of his own kin, nor family fame, nor pride of ancestry, ever conceived the idea of palming off their progenitor upon futurity as a giant of any build. if there is any exception to this statement, it would appear to be as follows: i. it is recorded by oldys that, one of his (shakespeare's) "younger brothers, who lived to a great age, when questioned, in his last days, about william, said he could remember nothing of his performance but seeing him 'act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried to a table at which he was seated among some company, and one of them sang a song.'" mr. fullom has demonstrated from the shakespeare family records, that oldys must have been mistaken as to any brother of william shakespeare's having furnished this reminiscence; but, admitting it as the statement of a surviving brother, it stands for what it is, and it certainly is not the record or tradition of one whose popular memory in men's minds was that of an immortal prodigy. * * we take this quotation from mr. grant white's article on shakespeare in appleton's "american cyclopoedia." mr. white's admirable contributions to our shakespearean literature entitle his opinion to great weight in any mooted question as to william shakespeare; and we must confess that, in some portions, his paper we have just mentioned almost suggests him as agreeing with us as to his subject. mr. white says, in another place: "young lawyers and poets produced plays rapidly. each theatrical company not only 'kept a poet,' but had three or four, in its pay. at the time of his leaving stratford the drama was rising rapidly in favor with all classes in london, where actors were made much of in a certain way. and where there was a constant demand for new plays, ill-provided younger sons of the gentry, and others who had been bred at the universities and the inns-of-court, sought to mend their fortunes by supplying this demand." and again: "we are tolerably well informed by contemporary writers as to the performances of the eminent actors of that time, but of shakespeare's we read nothing." mr. white admits, a few lines below the sentence just quoted, that shakespeare's position in the stock at the blackfriars was "general utility." we should rather call it, from the evidence, "first old man." { }ii. an epitaph was placed over the remains of susannah hall, presumably by one of the family, which read:= ```"witty above her sex, but that's not all: ```wise to salvation was good mistress hall. ```something of shakespeare was in that, but this ```wholly of him with whom she's now in bliss."= whether the writer of this mortuary eulogy meant that either william shakespeare or mistress hall, or both, were "witty above their sex" or "wise to salvation," cannot, at this date, be determined: but it would seem that this is all the immediate family of william shakespeare have ever contributed to our knowledge of him, and that their estimate of him was not unlike that of his chroniclers and contemporaries. but mr. malone--and, being the first investigator, he would, doubtless, have been followed, as he has been, whatever the result of his inquiries--mr. malone, in spite of the silence of the authorities to whose { }pages he had recourse, not only assumed all he could not find authority for, but undertook to tell us the precise dates at which his stratford lad composed the plays themselves. among other achievements he constructed an admirable "chronology" of the shakespearean plays; which--with such fanciful variations as have been made to it from time to time since--is an authority with the sliakespeareans even to this day. to be sure, mr. malone did not rely entirely upon external evidence for this apochrypha. he often appeals to the text, as when, for example, he settles the date at which the "merchant of venice" was composed--as , because portia says:= ```"even as a flourish when true subjects bow ```to a new crowned monarch,"= referring of course, says mr. malone, (and this guesswork he not only called "commentary," but has actually succeeded in making all his successor "commentators" accept him as final) to the coronation of henry iv., of france! again, in the "merry wives of windsor" he finds the words, (act i, scene iii) "sail like my pinnace to these golden shores." "this shows," says mr. malone, "that this comedy must have been written after sir walter raleigh's return from guinia, in . and so on." we will not rehearse the scope and burden of mr. malone's painstaking and wonderful labors, but, from one instance of the credulity which, once it has overmastered the ablest mind, can suppress and subordinate reason, judgment, and common sense to a zealous and silly search, we can judge of the calm historical value of his "discoveries." in , mr. malone published { }a pamphlet--"an account of the incidents from which the title and part of the story of 'the tempest' were derived, and the date ascertained." * * by edmond malone. london: printed by c. & r. baldwin, newbridge street, . the "tempest" is the most purely fanciful and poetical of the shakespearean plays, but the commentators determined to show that there is nothing fanciful or poetical about it; that it is all real: the "magic island," a real island; the magician prospero, a real portrait; the "monster," a real, living curiosity, which happened to be on exhibition in england in the days when the play either was written or about to be written, (it makes no difference to these gentlemen which) and the storm at sea--as if the brain which conceived the play could not have conceived--what is not, now-a-days, at least, the most uncommon thing in the world-- a storm at sea!--a real historical hurricane! in , the reverend joseph hunter, following in the malone footsteps, published "a disquisition on the scene, origin. date, etc., of shakespeare's tempest," in which the magic island is the island of lampedusa: first, because it is uninhabited; secondly, because it is small; thirdly, because it lies on the route between naples and the coast of africa, so that had a prince been traveling from one to the other, and wrecked on an island between, he could have been conveniently wrecked on this one without going out of his course; fourthly, because it bore the reputation (mr. hunter does not say with whom) of being haunted; fifthly, because there was a cell upon it, which pros-pero might have found most opportune for his ghostly residence; and sixthly, that the island of malta gets fire-wood from it. this last fact being strongest in the way of proof, because we are told that prospero impressed ferdinand into his service and kept him piling logs of wood. but it was reserved for mr. edward dowden, in , to locate the island beyond the necessity of further conjecture, and to give us accurate sailing directions for reaching it. "prospero's island," he tells us, "was imagined by shakespeare as within two days' quick sail of naples," for "ariel is promised his freedom after two days" (act i, scene ii). "why two days? the time of the entire action of the tempest is only three hours. what was to be the employment of ariel during two days? to make the winds and seas favorable during the voyage." (dowden's shakespeare's mind and art. new york: harper & brothers. . p. .) it seems that mr. malone finds reference to a hurricane that once dispersed a certain fleet of a certain nobleman, one sir george somers, in july, , on a passage, with provisions, for the virginia colony; the above nobleman, and a sir thomas gates, having been wrecked on the island of bermuda. this discovery is warranty enough for mr. malone, and he goes on gravely to argue that william shakespeare not only wrote his "tempest" to commemorate this particular { }tempest--and, as will be seen by an examination of the premises, the relation between the occurrence and the play is confined merely to the word "tempest" and goes no further--but that he (shakespeare) did not place the scene of his shipwreck on the bermudas, "because he could spread a greater glamour over the whole by not alluding to so well-known islands as the bermudas." mr. malone further remarks naively that, "without having read tacitus, he (shakespeare) well knew that 'omne ignotum pro magnifico est'!" without pausing to wonder how mr. malone knew that shakespeare of stratford had never read tacitus--(a slander, by the way, on the omniscient shakespeare, too--the man who studied plautus in greek manuscript, the author of "julius cæsar"--that he had not read a simple latin historian!)--or to dwell on the most marvelous coincidence between the wreck of sir george somers and that of prince ferdinand { }(the coincidence, according to malone, being, that one was wrecked on the bermuda and the other wasn't); or ask if a storm at sea was so rare an occurrence as to be easily identified; or to note that "the tempest" in the play of that name is an episode which covers only about a dozen lines of text, and which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the argument--without pausing for this, or to remark that mil malone might have taken to himself the 'omne ignotum pro magnifico est' of tacitus more appositely than heap-plied it either to sir george somers or the bermudas, had he reflected as generously as he took it for granted--it is as well to take our leave of mr. malone and his labors at this point, with a compliment to their zeal and impressment which must be withheld from their results. * * dequincy accepts this "origin" "with great alacrity." and the world would doubtless be as well off could we also here take leave of the rest of the shakespeare-makers. but we are not allowed to do so. from the time of malone onward, the shakespeare-making, shakespeare-mending, and shakespeare-cobbling have gone on without relaxation. each fresh rencontre with an emergency in the shakespearean text has necessitated at least one and often several new shakes-peares. and they have been prepared and forthcoming as fast as wanted. was it found that the bard had, of all his worldly goods, left the wife of his bosom no recognition save the devise of a ramshackle old bedstead? a score of gentlemen hurried to the front to prove that, by law, history, logic, custom, and every { }thing else, in those days a "second-best bed" was really the most priceless of possessions; of fabulous value, and a fortune in itself; and that in no other way could her immortal husband have so testified his tender regard and appreciation of mrs. shakespeare--the sweet ann hathaway of old, who had thrown herself away on a scapegrace butcher's son! the fact (as it appears, on inspection of the instrument itself, to be) that mrs. shakespeare was not even alluded to in the first draft of the testament--her name and the complimentary devise of the precious husband's precious "second-best bed" having been written in as "a poet's after-thought," and not appearing in the first draft at all--does not affect their statements in the least! they have even gone so far as to ascertain that william was no truant lord to willingly desert his lonesome lady. according to the very latest authority we are able to cite, the fault of the separation was wholly her own. we are assured by a very recent explorer that mrs. shakespeare "did not accompany her husband to london, objecting to the noise and turmoil of that city." * * "shakespeare and his contemporaries." by william tegg, f. r. h. s. london: william tegg & co., . chapter i., "sketch of the life of shakespeare," p. . as every circumstance connected with william shakespeare and stratford is of interest in the connection, we may as well note that, according to mr. grant white, when william shakespeare first went to london, he went into the office of a cousin of his, who was an attorney in that city. like mr. tegg, mr. white gives himself as an authority for this item. see his "shakespeare" in johnston's encyclopaedia. unless it be assumed, therefore, that investigation is reliable in proportion to the distance from its subject at which it works, it would seem to { }appear that, even if the william shakespeare we have portrayed were our own creation, the creation is actually a nearer resemblance to the william shakespeare known to those nearest to him in residence and time; than the inspired genius of the shakespeareans, who, from malone downward, have rejected every shred of fact they found at hand, and weaved, instead, their warp and woof of fiction (and that it is charming and absorbing fiction, we are eager to admit) around a vision of their own. nor have the shakespeareans rested their labors here. having created a shakespeare to fit the plays, it was necessary to proceed to create a face to fit the shakespeare, and a cranial development wherein might lodge and whence might spring the magic of the works he ought to have written. this may, very fairly, be called "the young ladies' argument." * "look on his portrait," say the shakespeareans; "look at that magnificent head!"--and they point to the chandos portrait--"is not that the head of a genius?" * so the young ladies of new york were of opinion that stokes should not be hanged for the murder of fisk, "because he was so awfully good-looking." { }inspiration--the ideal of the artist, who conceives, in every case, his own "shakespeare;" and if we were called upon for proof that "shakespeare" is quite as much of an ideal to the most of us as a "hamlet," or a "lear," we could cite, perhaps, nothing more convincing than the latitude which is allowed to artists with any of the three--"shakespeare," "was there ever such a head?" we should say, yes, there might have been such another head created, even admitting the chandos portrait to be the very counterfeit head of william shakespeare. but it does not appear, on taking the trouble to look into the matter, either that the chandos picture is a portrait, or that--with one exception--any other of the pictures, casts, masks, busts, or statues of william shakespeare are any thing but works of art, embodying the individual "hamlet," or "lear," and the elaborate criticism to which a new "portrait" of either of them is subjected--criticism, which, in the case of a portrait of william shakespeare, in no case pretends to be historical, but is always romantic, or sentimental, or picturesque: as to the proper pose of a poet, or the correct attitude for a man receiving efflatus directly from the gods; never as to the stage manager of the blackfriars, or the husband of anne hathaway, or the son of john shakespeare, of stratford. it appears that, as a matter of fact, there never was but one picture of the elizabethan manager which ever enjoyed any thing in the semblance of a certification to its authenticity; and that certification was in the very unsatisfactory form of rhyme, in the shape of a set of verses said to have been written by ben jonson (and, as we propose to show, are quite as likely to have been placed under the particular picture without jonson's authority as with it); while, that they were written to fit the particular picture in question (for they are in the form of a sort of apostrophe to some picture or portrait, and will be hereafter quoted), there seems to be no information sufficient to form a belief either way. if they were written for that particular picture, and if that particular picture is a speaking likeness, then the phrenological, or at least the physiognomical, { }argument must droop away and die; for the person represented has as stupefied, stultified, and insignificant a human countenance as was ever put upon an engraver's surface; and, as a matter of fact, no shakespearean has yet been found to admit it as the image of his dream. but, of course, this is mere matter of personal opinion, and entitled to no weight whatever in the discussion. the question is--is there any authentic portrait of william shakespeare, as there is of elizabeth, bacon, raleigh, southampton, and other more or less prominent characters of the age in which william shakespeare is known to have lived and died? let us do the best we can toward investigating this question. we have before us a volume, "an enquiry into the authenticity of various pictures and prints, which, from the decease of the poet to our own times, have been offered to the public as portraits of shakespeare. containing a careful examination of the evidence on which they claim to be received; by which the pretended portraits have been rejected, the genuine confirmed and established," etc., etc. by james boaden, esq. * we must content ourselves with a simple review of mr. boaden's labors. he was a friend and disciple of malone's, and a shakespearean; a believer in the poet; and he writes under the shadow of the mighty name--the shadow out from under which we of this age have stepped, and so become able to inspect, not only the facts of history uncurtained by that shadow, but the shadow itself. * london. printed for robert triphook, old bond street, . but we will take every { }one of mr. boaden's statements for granted, nevertheless, and draw our opinions, when we venture on any, from the portraits which he has given in his book. at least mr. boaden is not a "baconian," and not a "raleigh man," and, whenever he finds it necessary to speak of shakespeare's history, he follows malone's own version. for convenience, we will change mr. boaden's numeration of the "portraits," preserving the designation, however, which he assigns them. no. . william shakespeare dies in stratford in . in , appears, on the title-page of heminges and condell's first folio of the plays, the portrait by martin droeshout. it is an engraving, and, mr. boaden believes, a good engraving, of some original picture from which it must have been taken; "for," he says, "there were good engravers in those days; for chapman's 'homer' was published in that year, with a very tine engraving of chapman." under this engraving is printed a copy of jonson's lines, as follows: to the reader. ````this figure that thou here seest put, ```it was for gentle shakespeare cut; ```wherein the graver had a strife * ````with nature to outdo the life: ````o, could he but have drawn his wit ````as well in brasse as he hath hit ````his face: the print would then surpasse ````all that was ever done in brasse. ````but, since he can not, reader, look, ````not on his picture, but his booke.= * look, when a painter would surpasse the life, his art's with nature's handiwork at strife. venus and adonis. { }in this picture the head of the subject is represented as rising out of an horizontal plain of collar appalling to behold. the hair is straight, combed down the sides of the face and bunched over the ears; the forehead is disproportionately high; the top of the head bald; the face has the wooden expression familiar in the scotchmen and indians used as signs by tobacconists' shops, accompanied by an idiotic stare that would be but a sorry advertisement for the humblest establishment in that trade; and which we would be quite as unlikely to look for in the stratford scapegrace as in the immortal bard of the shakespeareans. it is of this picture that boaden quotes somebody's remark that "it is lucky these metrical commendations are not required to be delivered on oath." and steevens says, on the supposition that ben jonson, and not the engraver, put the copy of verses on the title-page beneath the effigy: "ben jonson might know little about art, care less about the resemblance, and, never having compared the engraving from the picture, have rested satisfied with the recollection that the original was a faithful resemblance; and that, no doubt, the engraver had achieved all that his art could perform." no. . the edition of the plays of is accompanied with what is known as "marshall's picture;" which so closely follows, as to face, forehead, hair, beard, and collar, the engraving above described, as to suggest that it was a copy either of that engraving, or of the unknown picture from which that was taken. but, if a copy, it is certainly, from a pictorial point of view, an improvement. it looks much more like a man. the simpleton stare around the eyes is toned down, and the wooden aspect is modified into some{ }thing like life. marshall has taken liberties with the dress of no. , throwing in a sort of tunic over the left shoulder, hitching on an arm with a gauntleted hand grasping a sprig of laurel, etc., etc. no. . the felton head.--"in the catalogue of the fourth exhibition and sale by private contract," says boaden, (page ),"at the european museum, king street, st. james square, ." this picture was announced to the public in the following words: "no. --a curious portrait of shakespeare, painted in ." on the st of may, , a mr. felton bought it for five guineas, and, on requiring its credentials, received the following letter: to mr. s. felton, drayton, shropshire--sir: the head of shakespeare was purchased out of an old house, known by the sign of "the boar," in eastcheap, london, where shakespeare and his friends used to resort; and report says was painted by a player of that time, but whose name i have not been able to learn. this letter was signed "j. wilson," who was the conductor of the european museum. this "j. wilson" appears to have been the original barnum. although prince hal and falstaff are said in the play to have affected "the boar's head in eastcheap," it does not appear, except from mr. "j. wilson," that "shakespeare and his friends" ever resorted thither. there was an old inn in eastcheap, but it was not called "the boar's head." there _was_ an inn by that name, however, in blackfriars, near the theater, from which the manager might have borrowed it. then, again, mr. "j. wilson" seemed to have forgotten the great fire in london in , which, "in a few hours, { }in a strong east wind, left the whole of eastcheap a mass of smoking ruins, and the wretched inhabitants could think of saving nothing but their lives." mr. wilson subsequently amended his story so as to read that "it was found between four and five years ago at a broker's shop at the minories by a man of fashion, whose name must be concealed," etc., etc. mr. steevens, who scouted the other pictures as spurious, accepted this picture, for a time, as the original of the engravings we have called no. and no. ; but finally, the whole thing exploded and was forgotten. no. . the bust in stratford church.--this was carved by nobody knows whom, from nobody knows what, nobody knows when; for the statement that it was cut by "gerard johnson," an amsterdam "tomb-maker," is invariably accepted, but can be traced to no historical source. says boaden (page ), "the performance is not too good for a native sculptor." in leonard digges alludes to it in a few verses well known. it seems to have been originally colored, but there is no testimony as to the original colors. in , one hundred and twenty-five years after digges, john hall, a stratford artist, "restored" it, painting the eyes a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn. this was "a good enough" shakespeare for all practical purposes for the next half-hundred years or so. but in came mr. malone. he caused the bust--in deference, probably, to a purer taste and a sense of churchly propriety--to be covered completely with a thick coat of white paint. * * while these pages are going through the press (april, ), however, we find a statement that within a year or two (and since the writer of these pages visited it) one simon colling has applied a bath to the bust--removing malone's whitewash, and revealing the identical auburn hair and hazel eyes which tradition had asserted to be underneath. { }from this bust, mr. boaden says, a mr. bullock once took a cast, which is sometimes engraved as frontispiece to an edition of the plays, in which case it is entitled "cast of the head of william shakespeare, taken after death," which may or may not--for mr. boaden can not tell us who this "mr. bullock" was--be the german "death mask" noticed further on, (at any rate the statement "taken after death"--"william shakespeare being unquestionably dead at the time--is literally true.) the bust represents its subject as possessing a magnificent head, admirably proportioned, with no protruding "bumps." the face is represented as breaking into a smile. according to this effigy, shakespeare must have had an extraordinarily long upper lip, the distance between the base of the nose and the mouth being remarkably out of proportion with the other facial developments; there seems to be a little difficulty, too, about the chin, which is pulled out into what appears to be a sort of extra nose; but, nevertheless, the stratford bust represents a fine, soldierly-looking man, with a fierce military mustache cocked up at the ends, and a goatee. if ben jonson--knowing his friend william shakespeare to have been the martial and altogether elegant-looking gentleman the stratford bust represents him--authorized the verses we have already quoted to be placed under the "droe-shout engraving," it was a deliberate libel on his part, and as gross as it was deliberate, and only perhaps to { }be explained by jonson's alleged secret enmity to, or jealousy of, william shakespeare, his rival playwright, which we shall be called to examine at length further on. * * post part iii. the jonsonian testimony. no. . "the chandos portrait." this picture, so termed because once the property of the duke of chandos, is the best known of all the so-called portraits--being, in fact, the one from which the popular idea of shakespeare is derived; therefore, when a man is said to resemble shakespeare, it is meant to be conveyed that he bears a likeness to the chandos picture. mr. malone announced that it was painted in , but never gave any other authority than his own ipse dixit for the statement, not even taking the trouble to refer, like mr. j. wilson, to "a man of fashion, whose name must be concealed." mr. boaden lays (page ) that he once saw it, and compared it "with what had been termed a fine copy, i think by piamberg, and found it utterly unlike." "indeed," he continues, "i never saw any thing that resembled it." he also says (pages - ) that "the copies by sir joshua reynolds and mr. humphrey were not only unlike the original, but were unlike each other, one being smiling and the other grave." that is to say, that not only have the romancers constructed "biographies," but the artists have kept up with them; and we may, every one of us, select our own shakespeare to-day--poet or potman, scholar or clown, tall or short, fair or dark; we may each suit our own tastes with a shakespeare to our liking. mr. boaden continues (page ): "it" (the chandos) "was very probably painted by burbage," { }the great tragedian, who is known to have handled the pencil; it is said to have been the property of joseph taylor, our poet's hamlet, who, dying about , at the advanced age of seventy, left the picture by will to davenant. at the death of davenant in , it was bought by betterton, the actor, and when he died mr. robert keck, of the inner temple, gave mrs. barry, the actress, forty guineas for it. from mr. keck it passed to mr. nichol, of southgate, whose daughter married the marquis of caernarvon. steevens, whom boaden quotes (page ), declined to be convinced by this genealogy, and said, "gossip rumor had given out that davenant was more than shakespeare's godson. * what folly, therefore, to suppose that he should possess a genuine portrait of the poet, when his lawful daughters had not one! mrs. barry was an actress of acknowledged gallantry; as she received forty guineas for the picture, something more animated might have been included though not specified in the bargain," etc., etc. steevens was fond of calling this picture "the davenantico bet{ }tertono-barryan-keckian-hicolsian-chandosian portrait." * there is a story that once, on the occasion of one of shakespeare's visits to stratford, a villager, meeting young davenant in the street, asked him where he was going. "to the inn, to see my godfather shakespeare," said the lad. "beware how you take the name of god in vain, my lad," said the other. the allusions to william's gallantries are numerous. on the stratford parish records there is entry of the birth of one "thomas green, _alias_ shakespeare." the tale of the interrupted amour, at the theater, of "richard the third" and "william the conqueror," as is apt to be the case, is about the most widely familiar of the shakespearean stories, and unnecessary to be repeated here. but davenant was proud to claim the dishonor of his mother, and shakespeare for his father, to his dying day. "there are," says boaden (page ), "a few circumstances relating to the picture of which some notice should be taken in this examination. there is, it seems, a tradition that, no original picture of shakespeare existing, sir thomas clarges caused a" (i. e., this) "portrait to be painted from a young man who had the good fortune to resemble him" (i. e., shakespeare. query: how did sir thomas know that the young man resembled shakespeare?). mr. malone traced this story to "the gentleman's magazine" for august, , and called on the writer for his authority; but the writer, whoever he was, never gave it, any more than malone gave his authority for announcing its date to be ; but malone himself says that "most reports of this kind are an adumbration of some fact, and indication of something in kind or degree similar or analogous." no. . this is a portrait, so called, by zuccharo, which need not detain us, since mr. boaden himself demonstrates very clearly that it was not in any event painted from life, and, not improbably, did not originally claim to have been intended for shakespeare at all. mr. boaden's no. is the "cornelius jansen picture," and to this mr. boaden pins his earnest faith. he says this "is now in the collection of the duke of somerset;" but he appears to make no attempt to connect it with william shakespeare except as follows: cornelius jansen is said to have painted the daughter of southampton--ergo, he might have been southampton's family painter, and southampton might have been desirous to possess a portrait of his friend shakespeare done by his own painter--ergo, jansen might { }have had william shakespeare for a sitter! this is all the authority for the authenticity. but that it is--judging from the engraving in mr. boaden's book--a magnificent picture, we think there can be no question. on the supposition that the chandos is an authentic likeness of shakespeare, this jansen certainly bears a strong shakespearean resemblance. in it the hair is curling, as in the chandos, not straight, as in the droeshout and the marshall engravings. the mustache, which is cut tight to the face without being shaved, as in the droeshout, and strong and heavy, as in the bust, is lighter than the chandos, while the beard is fuller. there is nothing of the tremendous upper lip represented in the bust. mr. boaden (page ) describes it as an eye-witness, he having had access to it for the purposes of the book before us. he says: "it is an early picture by cornelius jansen, tenderly and beautifully painted. time seems to have treated it with infinite kindness, for it is quite pure, and exhibits its original surface.... the portrait is on panel, and attention will be required to prevent a splitting of the oak, in two places, if my eyes have not deceived me." as for earlom, who copied the picture, boaden says: "he had lessened the amplitude of the forehead; he had altered the form of the skull; he had falsified the character of the mouth; and, though his engraving was still beautiful, and the most agreeable exhibition of the poet, i found it would be absolutely necessary to draw the head again, as if he had never exercised his talent upon it" (page ). mr. boaden specifies further the picture laid to have once decorated the pair of bellows belonging to queen elizabeth's { }own private apartments, besides still one other, both of which he rejects as spurious. thus, it has taken an army of novelists, painters, engravers, and essayists to erect simple william shakespeare of stratford into the god he ought to have been; and, on the best examination we are enabled to make, and according to the shakespeareans themselves, there is only one picture of william shakespeare extant which has the even assumed advantage of having been pronounced a likeness by any one who ever saw william shakespeare himself in his (william shakespeare's) lifetime. even if--as mr. steevens surmises--this eye witness never saw the engraving, but only the original portrait from which it was copied, the droeshout still enjoys an authentication possessed by no other so-called likeness, and, if rejected--as it infallibly is by all devout shakespeareans--there remains nothing of certitude, nothing even of the certitude of conjecture, as to the features of the stratford boy, whoever he was, and whatever his works. one further effort was, however, made, so lately as , to clinch this "young lady's argument," by yet one more genuine discovery. this time it was a "becker 'death mask!'" a plaster mask of an anonymous dead face is found in a rubbish-shop in mayence, in . regarded as a mask of william shakespeare, it bears a certain resemblance to the stratford bust; and, regarded as a mask of count bismarck (for example), it would be found to bear a very strong resemblance to count bismarck. (we write from an inspection of photographs only, never having seen the mask.) having always been annoyed that a creature so immortal { }as they had created their shakespeare left no death-mask, the shakespeareans at once adopt this anonymous mask as taken from the face of the two-days defunct william shakespeare, who died in . _credat judams!_ either william shakespeare, at his death, was known to be an immortal bard or he was not. if he was, how could the sole likeness moulded of departed greatness be smuggled away from the land that was pious to claim him as its most distinguished son and nobody miss it, or raise the hue and cry? if he was not, to whose interest was it to steal the mask from the family who cared enough about the dead man's memory to go to the expense of it? but, at any rate, in it falls into the hands of jealous believers. they search upon it for hairs of auburn hue, and for the date of their hero's death, and they find both. had they made up their minds to find a scrap of shakespearean cuticle, we may be sure it would have been there. professor owen, of the british museum, declared that, if the fact of the mask having originally come from england could be established, there was "hardly any sum of money which the museum would not pay for the mask itself." but the missing testimony has not been supplied, though doubtless it is incubating. for now and then we see a newspaper paragraph to the effect that old paintings have turned up (in pawn-shops invariably) which "resemble the death-mask," thus accustoming us to the title, which, in time, we shall doubtless come to accept--as we have come to accept shakespeare himself--from mere force of habit. the last of these discoveries is in australia, farther off than even mayence, "said to resemble the { }becker death-mask." * the stratford portrait of shakespeare claims no authority further than a resemblance to the accepted ideal, and the terra-cotta bust in the possession of the garrick club was "found to order," and represents a man who, it would seem, bore not even a resemblance to the accepted shakespearean features. * see the "academy," london, may , , p. , we understand that the mask is at present in possession of the british museum. we should, perhaps, mention that mr. boaden surmises that the droeshout picture is a portrait of william shakespeare the actor, in the character of "old ivnowell," and that the stratford bust was caused to be executed by dr. hall, a son-in-law of its subject, and was the work of one thomas stanton, who followed a cast taken after death. but, as mr. boaden admits, this is his surmise only. however insuperable, therefore, in the run of cases, the "young ladies argument" to prove from the pictures that william shakespeare was not author of the plays is quite weak enough; but, as an argument to prove that he was such author, it is weakness and impotence itself. it now becomes necessary to ask the ordinary question which a court would be obliged to ask concerning any exhibit produced before it, and claimed as authentic or authoritative: namely, where did the plays called shakespeare's come from? how did they get into print? who, if anybody, delivered the "copy" to the printer, and vouched for its authorship? it is manifest that we have no business here with any question of criticism, or as to an authenticity between different editions of the { }same play; but the plays were written to be played; how did they come to be published so that millions of readers, who never entered a playhouse where they were performed, read and still read them? in order to arrive at any supposition as to these considerations which would be of value to our purpose in these papers, it will be necessary to glance at the state of literary property in the days between and . how, in those days, there was absolutely no legal protection for an author's manuscript. once it had strayed beyond the writer's hand it was practically "publici juris"--any body's property. the first law of copyright enacted in england was the act of anne, of april , , more than one hundred years after the last date at which commentators claim the production of a shakespearean play. even the first authoritative pronunciation of a competent tribunal as to literary property at common law (which preceded, of course, all literary property definable by statute) was not made until , fifty-nine years later. but the court of star chamber (of obscure origin, but known to have been of powerful jurisdiction in the time of henry vii.) was in the height of its ancient omnipotence in those years. and of the various matters of which it took cognizance, one of the earliest was the publishing, printing, and even the keeping and reading of books. under date of june , --the year that many commentators assign as that in which william shakespeare first turned up in london--this star chamber, which had already issued many such, issued a decree that none should "print any book, work, or copy, against the form or meaning of any restraint contained in any statute of laws of this realm," except, { }etc., etc. twenty-nine years before--in --philip and mary had erected ninety-seven booksellers into a body called "the stationers' company," who were to monopolize the printing of books, if they so chose. they had given them power and authority--and their second charter, in , confirmed them in it--to print such books as they obtained, either from authors' manuscripts or translations, and to see very carefully that nobody else printed them. their power was absolute--they had their "privilegium ad imprimendum solum," and in the pursuit of any body who interfered with it they were empowered to "break locks, search, seize," and, in short, to suppress any printed matter they did not choose to license, wherever they pleased. this the worshipful company of stationers did not fail to do; they pursued, and the star chamber convicted. the disgraceful record of infamous and inhuman prosecutions and punishments for reading, keeping, selling, or making books might well detain us here, did our scope permit. * whatever literature accomplished in those days it accomplished by stealth, in defiance of the implacable and omnipotent star chamber and its bloodhound, the stationers' company, who ran in its victims. it can not, we think, be doubted, by a student of those times, * that whatever literary property existed { }at common law then existed in the shape of a license to print a work under permission of the stationers' company; that no estate or property obtained in anything except the types, ink, paper, in the license to use them all together to make a book, and in the resulting volume; and that what we understand by "copyright" to-day--namely, an author's or a proprietor's right to demand a royalty or percentage, or to exercise other control over the work when once printed and published--was altogether unconceived and unclaimed. * see "omitted chapters of the history of england," by andrew basset, ** "the person who first resolved on printing a book, and entered his design on that register, became thereby the legal proprietor of that work, and had the sole right of printing it."--carte, quoted in "reasons for a further amendment of the act , george iii., c. ," london, . john camden hotten, "seven letters, etc., on literary property," london, hotten, , describes the modern stationers' company as entrusted with "a vested interest over somebody else's property, a prescriptive right to interfere with the future work of other people's hands." we are aware that this statement as to the condition of authors' rights in the days of elizabeth will not pass unchallenged; but a review of the reported cases, as well as the extant records of the stationers' company, will, we think, support our conclusion. the first reported case of piracy was in , when the master of the rolls enjoined publication of "the whole duty of man" (morgan's "law of literature," vol. ii., p. ). whatever compensation the author of a work was able to obtain, he doubtless obtained beforehand, by sale of his manuscript, and dreamed not of setting up a tangible property as against any one who had obtained the stationers' company's license to print it. the stationers' company, at the outset of their career, opened a record, in which it entered the name of every book it licensed--the date, and the name of the person authorized to print it. * it was not until , twenty-eight years after william shakespeare's death (so far as we can ever know) that john milton, in his "are-opagitica"--the greatest state paper in the republic { }of letters, the declaration of independence, and the bill of rights of the liberty of literature--asserted * ** for the first time "the right of every man" to "his several copy, which god forbid should be gainsayd." * for the text of the "areopagitica" and copious notes as to the history of the days which called it out, see edition of j. vv. hale's, clarendon press series, macmillan & co., oxford, . ** in a pamphlet, "the prayse of the red herring" cited by farmer, in his "learning of shakespeare," page . once in their hands, printers did what they pleased with a manuscript; abridged it if they found it too long, and lengthened it if they found it too short. thomas nashe says, that, in a play of his, called "the isle of dogs," four acts, without his consent "or the least guesse of his drifte or scope," were added by the printers. * the printers also assigned the authorship of the work to any name they thought would help sell the book, and dedicated it to whom they pleased. (just as the first printer of the sonnets we call shakespeare's, dedicated them to "w. h.," which two initials have supplied the shakespeareans with an excuse for at least as many dozen octavo volumes of conjecture as to who "w. h." was.) sometimes the author thus despotically assigned to the work rebelled. dr. heywood recognized two of his own compositions in a collection of verses called "the passionate pilgrim," printed by one jaggard, in , upon the title-page to which, this jaggard had placed the name of william shakespeare as author. hey-wood publicly claimed his own, but william shakespeare never denied or affirmed; his name, however, was removed by the printer from the title-page of the { }third edition of the book, in . * but, as a rule, the stationers' company were too powerful, and the author too poor, to bring the trick to exposure. * shakespeare, by r. g. white. vol. ., page lxxvii. it was under these circumstances, and in times like these, that the shakespearean plays began to appear in print. where did they come from? they were written to be played. according to all accounts they were very valuable to the theater which produced them. every personal and selfish interest of the proprietors, whether of the theater or of the manuscript plays, dictated that they should be kept in secret--least of all that they should be printed and made accessible to the public outside of the theater, who otherwise, to see them, must become patrons of the house where they were performed. that the author or authors of the plays could have made them of more profit by selling them to the printers than to the players is doubtful; that they personally entered them--or such of them as were entered--on the books of the stationers' company, is certainly not the fact; the only persons to whose interest it was to print them were the printers themselves, and, in all probability, it was the printers who did cause them to be printed. but where did these printers procure the "copy" from which to set up the plays they printed? the question will never be answered. the manuscripts might have been procured by bribing individual actors, each of whom could have easily furnished a copy of his individual part, and so the whole be made up for the press. the fact that the plays never were printed without more or less of the stage directions or "business" included, lends probability to this theory: { }but, as to whether a play made up in this fashion would have resulted in any thing like what we possess to-day, we have considered further on. mr. grant white admits, * as must everybody who examines into the matter, that whatever the printers printed was unauthorized and surreptitious. but, having admitted this much, mr. white is too ardent a shakespearean not to make some effort to throw a guise of authenticity around the text he has so lovingly followed. in the article we have just quoted from in our foot-note, he says, "it is not improbable that, in case of great and injurious misrepresentation of the text of a play by" this surreptitious method of publication, "fair copies were furnished by the theatrical people at the author's request in self-defence." perhaps these plays might have found their way into print just as the comedy of "play" found its way into print in , ** or the play of "mary warner," *** at about the same date. at any rate the editors of the first folio speak of the "stolne and surreptitious copies" which had preceded them. * "such of his plays as were published during his lifetime seem to have been given to the press entirely without his agency; indeed, his interest was against their publication.... it was the interest of all concerned, whether as proprietors, or only as actors, or, like himself, as both, that the theaters should have the entire benefit of whatever favor they enjoyed with the public. but the publishers, or stationers, as they were then called, eagerly sought copies of them for publication, and obtained them surreptitiously: sometimes, it would seem, by corrupting persons connected with the theater, and sometimes, as the text which they printed shows, by sending short-hand writers to the performance." ** palmer v. dewitt, new york r. . *** crowe v. aiken. bissel r. . { }the first and second editions of "hamlet," says mr. white, "in and , might have been the result of such maneuvers on the part of the printers and the stenographers, or those who had access to the manuscripts of the author. however this may be, twenty of shakespeare's plays were published by various stationers during his lifetime; they are known as the quartos, from the form in which they are printed. they are most of them full of errors.... some of them seem to have been put in type from stage copies, or, not improbably, from an aggregation of the separate parts which were in the hands of the various actors." in other words, shakespeare's works were so imperfectly printed, against his will, during his lifetime, that he himself authorized _other imperfect_--mr. white says they were imperfect--versions to be likewise printed! mr. white might have looked nearer home to more purpose. nobody knows, nobody can know better than he, that what is called the "accepted" or "received" text of shakespeare (if there is, to speak minutely, any such to-day) has been arrived at and made up piecemeal, and in the course of time, by the commentators selecting from the folios, and other original editions, such "readings" as the judgment of scholarship or the taste of criticism has, on the whole, adopted; and any body who cares to take the trouble to examine these original editions can see as much for himself. to suppose that this text, as it stands to-day, is the text as its author or authors wrote it, is, it seems to us, to suppose at least ten thousand coincidences, every one of which is, to say the least, improbable. before proceeding any further, let us recapitulate { }the three historical certainties to which we have arrived. first, that the state of the law was favorable, (indeed, it would be impossible to conceive of a state more favorable), to literary imposture or incognito. second, that nobody stands on record as claiming to know the authorship of these plays, except the printers, who were able to sell them by using the name of the manager of a popular theater; and, therefore, whose interest it was to affix that name to them; and, third, that there was never a period in which it was so reasonably an author's interest to be anonymous, or preserve his incognito, as these very years covered by the lifetime of william shakespeare; when, between the stationers' company and the star chamber, it was a fortunate author, printer or reader, who escaped hanging, disemboweling, and quartering, with only the loss of ears or liberty. who wrote these plays? london was full of playwrights, contemporary with william shakespeare, many of them his friends and familiars; possibly, all of them submitting their manuscripts to his editorial eye. we have their works extant to-day. ben jonson was a poet and a pedant; greene, a university-bred man. and we may go through the list and verify the records of them all, and find in each some quality or training from which to reasonably expect fruitage. but nobody has ever ventured to hazard so wild a theory as that any of them wrote the anonymous immortal plays to which the best of their own acknowledged masterpieces are mere rubbish. but a butcher's boy, lately from stratford, happens to be manager of a contemporary theater. he, there{ }fore, must be the writer, and there can not be the slightest doubt of it. the story that this boy ever stole deer is rejected as resting on insufficient evidence. but no evidence is required to prove his authorship of the topmost works in the history or the literature of england. we have seen the monopoly that overruled the press. we have seen that the stationers' company insisted upon recording the name and ownership of every printed thing; and their record-books are still extant, and bear no trace of any such claimant as william shakespeare. we have weighed the surmises of the shakespeareans as to these times, and seen their probable value; and have found it just as impossible to connect the immortal fragments we call the shakespearean plays to-day with william shakespeare, of stratford, as we have already found it to imagine him as having access to the material, the sealed records, and the hidden muniments employed in their construction. is there any more evidence to be examined? but were these plays, so printed _outside_, the same plays as those acted _inside_ the theater? when we recall the style of audiences that assembled in those days (m. taine says the spectators caroused and sang songs while the plays progressed; that they drank great draughts of beer; and, if they drank too much, burned juniper instead of retiring; anon, they would break upon the stage, toss in a blanket such performers as pleased them not, tear up the properties, etc., etc.)--when we recall this, it is not the easiest thing in the world to imagine this audience so very highly delighted, for instance, with wolsey's long soliloquy (which the actor of to-day delivers in a dignified, low, and unimpassioned monotone, without gesture), or { }hamlet's philosophical monologues, or isabella's pious strains. _some_ plays were highly popular inside those theaters. were these the ones? mr. grant white has all reason, probability, and common sense on his side, when he insists that the theater most jealously guarded the manuscripts of the plays that were making its fortune; and that it would have been suicide in it to have circulated them outside, in print. but may not the echo of the popularity of certain plays called "hamlet," "king john," "macbeth," etc., have induced others, outside the theater, to have circulated plays, christened with these names (or with and under the popular name of shakespeare), for gain among the "unco guid" who would not, or the impecunious who could not, enter the theater door? there is no need of opening up so hopeless a speculation--a speculation pure and simple, that can never, in the nature of things, be confronted by data either way. but the fact does remain that these marvelous plays appeared in print contemporaneously with the professional career of an actor named william shakespeare, and in the same town where he acted; that, if they were his, it would have been to his interest to have kept them out of print; and that their appearance in print he most certainly did not authorize; and who can claim that one guess is not as good as another, where history is silent, and tradition askew, and the truth buried under the dust of centuries, overtopped yy the rubbish of conjecture? we repeat, we have no warrant to intrude upon the domain of criticism. the shakespearean text, as we possess it to-day, is too priceless, whatever its source, to be rudely touched. but, so far as is revealed by the record of its appearance { }among printed literature, there is no evidence, internal or external, as to william shakespeare's production of it, and as to its origin we are as hopelessly in the dark as ever. dubious as is the chronicle of those days as to other matters, it is singularly clear as to what was printed and what was not. for those were the sort of days when men whose names were not written in the books of the stationers' company printed at the peril of clipped ears and slit noses, or worse; and those books are still extant. but, by the fatality which seems to follow and pervade the name of william shakespeare, this record, like every other, national or local, yields nothing to the probe but disappointment and silence as to the man of stratford and the actor of blackfriars. we will, presently, consider as to whether the same intellect composed the "hamlet" at one sitting, and at another, located bohemia on the sea-coast; and whether, on inspection, it might not be strongly suggested that the two conceptions indicated geniuses of quite different orders and not one and the same person; that one showed the hand-marks of a poet and the other the hand-marks of the stage-manager, etc. if the limits of this work permitted, we believe the same hand-marks might be collected from the treatment of the text of every play. for instance, the "comedy of errors" is supposed to occur during the days when ephesus was ruled by a duke, and follows--as we have already shown--the unities of the menæchmi of plautus. but the ignoramus who doctored the paraphrase for the blackfriars stage found it convenient, to bring on his stage effect, to introduce a christian monastery into ephesus at about that time, { }with a lady abbess who could refuse admission to the duke himself, so inviolable and sacred was the sanctuary of consecrated christian walls! the monastery was as convenient to bringing all the befogged and befooled and sadly mixed up personages of the comedy face to face at the moment, as was the seashore and the bear, in "a winter's tale," to account for the princess perdita among the shepherds, and so in they all go. these, and the like brummagem and ruses de convenances, are simple enough to understand, and detract in no degree whatever from the value of the plays: they can be retired or retained at pleasure, and no harm done, if we only remember to whom and to what they are assignable. but, if we forget that, and insist that the very same pen which wrote the dialogue wrote the setting--wrote every entrance, exit, and direction to the scene-shifters and stage-carpenters, and, therefore, that every dot and comma, every call and cue, every "gag" and localism, is as sacred as holy writ, no wonder the scholars of the text are puzzled! for example, we find that mr. wilkes, and mr. harper, in the "american catholic review" for january, --who otherwise believe the author of the shakespearean plays to have been a roman catholic--are almost persuaded that he must have been a protestant, because he finds occasion to make mention of an "evening mass." but let us assure messrs. wilkes and harper that they need neither abandon nor adopt a theory on rencontre with so trivial a phenomenon. if william shakespeare felt the need of an "evening mass" at any time, we may be fairly sure, from our experience of that worthy, that he put one in. he had bolted too many camels { }in his day to hesitate at such a gnat as that! the creator of a convent in old ephesus and of a sea-coast to bohemia was not one to stick at a trifling "evening mass!" the gentlemen above mentioned, believe the author of the plays to have been a romanist, not because the reverend richard davies, writing soon after , distinctly says "he died a papist," (for any statement made anywhere within a hundred years of william shakespeare's lifetime is "mere gossip," and it is only the biographies we write now-a-days that are to be relied upon), but mainly because the liturgy and priesthood of that church are invariably treated with respect in the plays, while dissenting parsons are poked fun at without stint. doubtless, in the modern drama the same rule will be perceived to obtain. the imperious liturgy and priesthood of the roman or of the stately anglican church appear to be beyond the attempts of travesty; while the snivel and preach of mere puritanism has always been too tempting an opportunity for "aminadab sleek" and his type--to be resisted, and such a fact would justify very little conclusion either way. besides, there is no call to insist that the stage, in epitomizing life into the compass of an hour, shall preserve every detail; nothing less than a chinese theater could answer a demand like that. there is a dramatic license even broader than the license accorded to poetry, and we would doubtless find the drama a sad bore if there were not. william shakespeare, during his managerial career, appears to have understood this as well as any body; nor have the liberties he took with facts and chronology befogged any body, except the { }daily lessening throng of investigators, who believe him to be the original of the masterpieces he cut into play-hooks for his stage. but did william shakespeare ever try his hand at verse-making? there is considerable rumor to the effect that, during the leisure of his later life, no less than in the lampooning efforts of his vagrom youth, he did turn his pen to rhymes. and the future may yet bring forth a shakespearean honest enough to collect these verses--as they follow here--and to entitle them--= ````the complete poetical works `````of ```william shakespeare. ````epitaph on elias james. * ```when god was pleased, the world unwilling yet, ```elias james to nature paid his debt, ```and here reposeth; as he liv'd he dyde; ```the saying in him strongly verified-- ```such life, such death; then, the known truth to tell, ```he lived a godly lyfe, and dyde as well.= ```epitaph on sir thomas stanley. ** ```ask who lyes here, but do not weepe: ```he is not dead, he doth but sleepe; ```this stony register is for his bones, ```his fame is more perpetual than these stones, ```and his own goodness, with himself being gone, ```shall live when earthly monument is none.= * on the authority of "a ms. volume of poems by herrick and others, said to be in the handwriting of charles i., in the bodleian library. ** on the authority of sir william dugdale ("visitation book"), who says, "the following verses were made by william shakespeare, the late famous tragedian." this appears to be our author's longest and most ambitious work. { } ```not monumental stone preserves our fame ```nor skye aspyring pyramids our name; ```the memory of him for whom this stands ```shall outlive marble and defacer's hands, ```"when all to time's consumption shall be given; ```stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in heaven.= ```epitaph ox tom-a-combe, otherwise thixbeard. * ```thin in beard and thick in purse, ```never man beloved worse; ```he went to the grave with many a curse, ```the devil and he had both one nurse.= ````whom i have drunken with. ** ```piping pebworth, dancing marston, ```haunted hillsborough and hungry grafton; ```with dancing exhall, papist wixford, ```beggarly bloom and drunken bidford.= ````david and goliath. *** ```goliath comes with sword and spear, ````and david with a sling; ```although goliath rage and swear ````down david doth him bring.= on john combe, a covetous rich man, mr. william shake-speare wright this att his request while hee was yett liveing for his epitaphe. ****= ```ten in the hundred lies here engraved; ```' tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved; ```if any one asks, "who lies in this tomb?" ```"hoi hoi" quoth the devil, "'tis my john a combe."---- * on the authority of peck, "memoirs of milton," to, ** on the authority of john jordan. there is a strong poetic license here--according to the well-known legend, william had really only drunk with bidford; the quantrain is probably the work of jordan and not shakespeare. *** on the authority of stratford local tradition. **** aslimolean ms., cited by halliwell. the pun is on the warwickshire pronunciation, "ho! ho!" quoth the devil, "'tis my john has come!" see aubrey's version: "ten in the hundred the devil allows, but coombs will have twelve he swears and vows," etc. { }----but being dead, and making the poor his heires, hee after wrightes this for his epitaphe. * ```howere he lived judge not, ```john combe shall never be forgott ```while poor hathe memmorye, for he did gather ```to make the poor his issue, be their father, ```as record of his tilth and seedes, ```did crown him in his later needes. `````_finis. w. shak_.= lampoon on sir thomas lucy. ** ```sir thomas was too covetous, ````to covet so much deer, ```when horns enough upon his head ````most plainly do appear. ```had not his worship one deer left? ````what then? he had a wife. ```took pains enough to find him horns ````should last him all his life. * ashmolean ms. same as preceding. both the above are given by mr. grant white. shakespeare, vol. i, p. ci. ** this is given to us by mr. s. w. fullom (history of william shakespeare, player and poet; with new facts and traditions. london: saunders, oatley & co., , p. ,) with the following note: "the manner in which this fragment was recovered is not different from that to which we owe so many local ballads, known only to the common people. about , joshua barnes, the greek professor at cambridge, was in an inn at stratford, when he heard an old woman singing these stanzas, and, discerning the association with shakespeare, offered her ten guineas to repeat the whole ballad. this, however, she was unable to do, having forgotten the remaining portion." mr. fullom says these verses "reveal the shakespearean touch," and alludes to a scandal touching lady lucy's infidelity to her husband. the following additional verses were furnished by john jordan, who altered the above stanza into the same meter, and asserted the whole to be shakespeare, as unearthed and restored by himself: he's a haughty, proud, insolent knight of the shire at home nobody loves, yet there's many that fear; if lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscall it-- synge lowsie luey, whatever befall it. to the sessions he went, and did lowdly complain his park had been robbed and his deere they were slain; this lucy is lowsie, as some volke miseall it-- synge lowsie luey, whatever befall it. he sayd it was a ryot, his men had been beat, his venison was stol'n and clandestinely eat: so lucy is lowsie as some volke miscall it-- synge lowsie luey, whatever befall it. so haughty was he when the fact was confessed he sayd 'twas a wrong that could not be redressed; so luey is lowsie, as some volke miseall it-- synge lowsie luey, whatever befall it. though luces a dozen he wear on his coat, his name it shall lowsie for luey be wrote; for luey is lowsie, as some volke miseall it-- we'll sing lowsie lucy, whatever befall it. if a juvenile frolic he can not forgive, we'll sing lowsie lucy as long as we live; and luey the lowsie a libel may call it-- we'll sing lowsie lucy whatever befall it. mr. collier (shakespeare, r. g. white, ed. , p. cciii), gives the following four verses as by william shakespeare: on the king. crown have their compass, length of days their date, triumphs their tomb, felicity her fate; of naught but earth can earth make us partaker, but knowledge makes a king most like his maker. but gives no other authority for it than "a coeval manuscript." the world has, very regrettingly, come to look with such suspicion on mr. jollier's discoveries, that this relic, until confirmed, will hardly be accepted as genuine. { }another version of the lampoon. * ```a parliament member, a justice of peace, ```at home a poor scarecrow, at london an asse; ```if lowsie is lucy, as some volke miscalle it, ```then lucy is lowsie, whatever befalle it. ```he thinks himself greate, ````yet an asse is his state: ```we allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. ```if lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, ```sing, o lowsie lucy, whate'er befalle it.= some lampoon was affixed by young william to sir thomas lucy's park gate, and enraged the baronet to such a degree that--according to capell--he directed a lawyer at warwick to commence a prosecution against the lad. the lucy note, however, makes no mention of the lawyer, only stating that young shakespeare deemed it prudent to quit stratford, "at least for a time." the long ballad of six stanzas (which we give in the foot-note) was written by john jordan, a harmless rustic who lived at stratford in the days of malone and ireland, i. e. in the last years of the eighteenth century, and went about claiming to have inherited the mantle of shakespeare. the "piping pebworth" verses, and perhaps the whole story was written by him. * according to capell, oldys, and grant white. (see mr. white's shakespeare, vol. i. p. xxxviii.) oldys leaves out the "o" in the fourth and eighth lines. mr. fullom (cited above) declares this version to be spurious. (see note , p. .) at any rate, he seems to have succeeded in obtaining immortality by mixing his own efforts so successfully with the shakespearean { }remains as to make them all one in the local traditions. the above, with the= ````inscription for his own tomb. ```good frend, for jesvs' sake forbeare, ````to digg ye dust encloased here. ```blesse be ye man yt spares thes stones, ````and cvrst be he yt moves my bones.= (which was originally placed on the stone over william shakespeare's vault in the chancel of trinity church, stratford--was recut in the new stone which was found necessary fifty years ago, and now appears with the verbal contractions as given above) are all the literary compositions which, according to the local traditions of stratford, his home, where he was born, lived, and died--where alone, for a century or more after his death his reputation was cherished--william shakespeare ever produced. there is nothing: in them inconsistent with the record of the man himself; and, so far as we know, have never been rejected by the shakespeareans themselves. it certainly would not be honest, in our present appeal to history, to insert in this edition--we may fairly call it "the stratford edition"--of master shakespeare's poetry, all that he edited for the stage; or, worse yet, borrowed and dressed up, and--according to robert greene--passed for his own. we are very far from desiring even to do justice to poor robert greene, if in so doing we shall detract a hair's weight from the merits of william shakespeare. but it is not impossible to say a good word even for greene. although his language is not within such bounds of propriety as the shakespeareans could wish, { }modern research has amply proved that he told the truth, and that william shakespeare borrowed, or rather seized upon and adopted, without compensation, the work by which greene earned his bread. for greene's language, chettle, greene's editor, makes haste, sometime afterward, when william shakespeare had been taken up by "divers of worship" to apologize, as far as an editor can apologize for an author. we shall see, further on, how william shakespeare was shrewd enough to make himself useful to these "divers of worship," and in those days, and for a century after, no slavery was so abject as the slavery of letters to patronage. so, of course, chettle hastened to make his peace with them too. but the truth remains, nevertheless, that poor greene told only the truth. it is fashionable with the shakespeareans to sneer at greene, because he was "jealous" of shakespeare. he appears to have had reason to be jealous! but no name is bad enough to bestow on him. mr. grant white says: "robert greene, writing from the fitting deathbed of a groveling debauchee, warns three of his literary companions to shun intercourse with," etc., "certain actors, shakespeare among the rest." if robert greene died from over-debauch, it is no more than shakespeare himself died of, according to the entry in the diary of the rev. john ward. "it is not impossible," says mr. white, "even that this piece of gossiping tradition is true." mr. white is right to call it "gossiping tradition," for it is piece and parcel of all the other mention of william shakespeare of stratford. if it were not for "gossiping tradition," we had never heard, and mr. white had never written, of that personage. but { }mr. white makes no reservation of "gossiping tradition" in the case of robert greene. greene dies "on the fitting deathbed of a groveling debauchee," because he was jealous of william shakespeare, and was so injudicious, and so far forgot himself as to call that "jack of all trades" an "upstart crowe, beautified with our feathers," etc. it seems that poor robert greene's dying words--if they were his dying words--were his ante-mortem legacy of warning and prophecy to the ages which were to follow him. but they have not been heeded. his "upstart crowe" has not only kept all his borrowed feathers, but is arrayed each passing day with somebody's richer and brighter plumage. if robert greene could speak from the dust, he doubtless could tell us--as jonson and the rest might have told us in their lifetimes, if they only would--whose all this plumage really was and is. but all are dust and ashes together now--dust and ashes three centuries old--and, as miss bacon said, "who loses any thing that does not find" the secret of that dust? however, not a shakespearean stops to waste a sigh over the memory of poor robert greene, * who saw his bread snatched from his mouth by a scissorer of other men's brains, and who was too human to see * "robert greene was a clergyman, and with no less poetry or rhetoric than his fellows (nash, peele, and william shakespeare), was, from his miscellaneous and discursive reading, a very useful man in his coterie." dr. latham speaks of his book as "a groats worth of rest, purchased with a million of repentance," which certainly makes better sense than "a groat's worth of wit," etc., as usually written. which is right? greene died in . { }and hold his peace; but over the drunken grave of the stratford pretender--who was vanquished in his cups at bidford and pebworth, and lay all night under the thorn-tree, but who died bravely in them at the last--they weep as for one cut off untimely, as dame quickly over the lazared and lecherous clay of sir john falstaff: "nay, sure, he's in arthur's bosom, if ever a man went to arthur's bosom.'a made a finer end, and went away an it had been any christom child." but let us not assume the appearance of unkindness to william shakespeare. he lived a merry life; and, so far as we can know, wronged nobody except his own wife, poor robert greene, and perhaps the delinquent for malt delivered. he loved his own, but that is no wrong. and, we must not forget that, so far as the world can ever know, he claimed not as his, save by his silence, the works a too flattering posterity has assigned him. the appeal to history not only declines to set aside, but affirms, with costs, the verdict rendered upon the evidence. and the sum is briefly this: if william shakespeare wrote the plays, it was a miracle; every thing else being equal, the presumption is against a miracle; but, here, every thing else is not equal, for all the facts of history are reconcilable with history and irreconcilable with the miracle; if history is history, then miracle there was none--in other words, if there were one miracle, then there must have been two. if there had lived no such man as william shakespeare, that "william shakespeare" would be as good a name as any other to designate the authorship of the shakespearean page, who will consider it worth while to { }question? but to credit the historical man with the living page demands, in our estimation, either a willful credulity, or an innocence that is almost physical blindness! { } part iii. the jonsonian testimony. [illustration: ] ut what is the summing up on the other side? merely the following copy of verses: to the memory of my beloved, the author, master william shakespeare, and what he hath left us. ```to draw no envy, shakespeare, on thy name ```am i thus ample to thy book and fame; ```while i confess thy writings to be such ```as neither man nor muse can praise too much. ```'tis true and all men's suffrage. but these ways ```were not the paths i meant unto thy praise; ```for seeliest ignorance on these may light, ```which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; ```or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance ```the truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; ```or crafty malice might pretend this praise ```and think to ruin where it seemed to raise. ```these are as some infamous bawd or whore ```should praise a matron; what could hurt her more? ```but thou art proof against them, and, indeed, ```above the ill fortune of them, or the need, ```i, therefore, will begin: soul of the age, ```the applause, delight, and wonder of our stage! ```my shakespeare rise! i will not lodge thee by ```chaucer, or spenser, or bid beaumont lie ```a little further to make thee a room. ```thou art a monument without a tomb, ```and art alive still while thy book doth live ```and we have wits to read and praise to give. ```that i not mix thee so, my brain excuses. ```i mean with great but disproportioned muses.= { } ```for if i thought my judgment were of years, ```i should commit thee surely with thy peers, ```and tell how far thou didst our lyly outshine, ```or sporting kyd, or marlowe's mighty line; ```and though thou hadst small latin and less greek, ```from thence to honor thee i would not seek ```for names: but call forth thundering Æschylus, ```euripides and sophocles to us. ```pacuvius, accius, him of cordova dead, ```to life again to hear thy buskin tread ```and shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on ```leave thee alone for the comparison ```of all that insolent greece or haughty rome ```sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. ```triumph, my britain, thou hast one to show ```to whom all scenes of europe homage owe. ```he was not of an age, but for all time! ```and all the muses still were in their prime ```when, like apollo, he came forth to warm ```our ears; or like a mercury to charm. ```nature herself was proud of his designs, ```and joyed to wear the dressing of his lines! ```which were so richly spun and woven so fit ```as, since she will vouchsafe no other wit, ```the merry greek, tart aristophanes, ```neat terence, witty plautus, how not please, ```but antiquated and deserted lie ```as they were not of nature's family. ```yet must i not give nature all; thy art, ```my gentle shakespeare, must enjoy a part; ```for though the poets matter nature be, ```his art doth give the fashion; and that he ```who casts to write a living line must sweat ```(such as thine are), and strike the second heat ```upon the muse's anvil; turn the same ```and himself with it, that he thinks to frame, ```or for the laurel he may gain a scorn, ```for a good poet's made, as well as born; ```and such wert thou! look how the father's face { } ```lives in his issue, even so the race ```of shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines ```in his well-turned and true-filled lines: ```in each of which he seems to shake a lance ```as brandished at the eyes of ignorance. ```sweet swan of avon, what a sight it were ```to see thee in our waters yet appear, ```and make t-hose flights upon the banks of thames ```that did so take eliza and our james! ```shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage ```or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage, ```which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like `````night ```and despairs day, but for thy volume's light.= this is all there is of jonson's labored verses, of which very few shakespeareans care to quote more than isolated passages of a line or two each. but taking them either as a whole (with their involved metaphors and most execrable and inapposite pun about shakespeare's lines "shaking a lance at ignorance")--or in spots (whichever spots the shakespeareans prefer), what sort of historical proof does this poem afford? what sort of testimony is this as to a fact? is it the sort we accept in our own personal affairs--in our business--in our courts of justice--in matters in which we have any thing at stake, or any living interest? will any insurance company pay its risk on the ship dolphin, on being furnished, by the dolphin's owners, with a thrilling poem by mr. tennyson or mr. tup-per, describing the dreadful shipwreck of the dolphin, the thunderous tempest in which she went down--the sky-capping waves, rent sails, creaking cordage, etc., etc.? will any jury of twelve men hang a thirteenth man for murder on production, by the state, of a harrowing copy of verses, dwelling on midnight assassina{ }tion, stealthy stabs, shrieking victims, inconsolable widows, orphans, and the like? and shall we require less or more proof, in proportion as the fact to be proved is nearer or more remote? however, since the shakespeareans rest their case on these verses, (for any one who cares to examine for himself will find the residue of the so-called "contemporary testimony," which is usually in rhyme, to be rather criticism--that is to say _eulogy_, for we find very little of any other sort of literary criticism in those days--as to the compositions than chronicle as to the man) we can well afford to waive these questions, and cross-examine ben jonson and his verses without pressing any objection to their competency. for criticism of the works is what meres's * opinion that "the sweete wittie soul of ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued shakespeare; witness his "venus and adonis," his "lucrece," his sugared sonnets among his private friends...." as plautus and seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the latines, so shakespeare among the english is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.... * "palladis tamia." as epius stoio said that the muses would speake with plautus' tongue, if they would speake latin, so i say that the muses would speake with shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speake english, etc., etc., etc., amount to; and so weever's= ```"honey-tongued shakespeare, when i saw thine issue, ```i swore apollo got them, and none other"--= probably means, if it means any thing, precisely what it says, namely, that when he read the plays, he swore { }that they were certainly apollo's. and if the comments of henry chettle, sir john davies, leonard digges, hugh holland, and the rest, do not read to the same effect, they have a meaning beyond what they express. but panegyric is not history--at least it can not override history. between the affirmative theory of the stratfordian authorship, then, and the demonstration of its utter impossibility and absurdity, there actually remains but the single barrier of the jonsonian testimony, contained in the copy of verses entitled "to the memory of my beloved, the author, mr. william shakespeare, and what he hath left us," written by mr. ben jon-son, and prefixed to the famous folio of . if this testimony should ever be ruled out as incompetent, there would actually remain nothing except to lay the shakespearean hoax away, as gently as might be, alongside its fellows in the populous limbo of exploded fallacies. however, let it not be ruled out merely on the ground that it is in rhyme. we have no less an authority than littleton--"auetoritas philosopho-rum, medieorum et poetarum sunt in causis allegan-dæ et tenendæ" *--to the effect that the testimony, even of poets, is sometimes to be received. it is to be ruled out rather by a process akin to impeachment of the witness--by its appearing that the witness, elsewhere in the same controversy, testifies to a state of facts exactly opposite. for the truth is that, whatever ben jonson felt moved to say about his "pal" william shakespeare, whenever, "as a friend, he { }dropped into poetry," he was considerably more careful when he sat himself down to write "cold prose." * "co. lit.," a. just as "bully bottom," fearing lest a lion should "fright the ladies," and "hang every mother's son" of his troupe, devised a prologue to explain that the lion was no lion, but only snug the joiner, "a man as other men are," so master ben jonson, however tropical and effusive as to his contemporary in his prosody, in his prologue in _prose_ was scrupulous to leave only the truth behind him. mountains--ossian piled on pelion--of hearsay and lapse of time; oceans of mere opinion and "gush" would, of course, amount to precisely nothing at all when ranged alongside of the testimony of one single, competent, contemporary eye-witness. no wonder the shakespeareans are eager to subpoena ben jonson's verses. but, all the same, they are marvelously careful _not_ to subpoena his prose. and yet this prose is extant, and by no means inaccessible. malien jonson died, in , he left behind him certain memoranda which were published in , and are well-known as "ben jonson's discoveries." one of these memoranda--for the work is in the disjointed form of a common-place book of occasional entries--is devoted to the eminent men of letters in the era spanned by its author's own acquaintance or familiarity. it runs as follows: _cicero is said to be the only wit that the people of rome had equaled to their empire. imperium par imperio. we have had many, and in their several ages (to take in the former sæculum), sir thomas more, the elder wiat, henry, earl of surry, chal-oner, smith, eliot, b. gardiner, were, for their times, admirable; and the more because they began eloquence with us. sir nich{ }olas bacon was singular and almost alone in the beginning of elizabeth's time. sir philip sidney and mr. hooker (in different matter) grew great masters of wit and language, and in whom all vigour of invention and strength of judgment met. the earl of essex, noble and high, and sir walter raleigh not to be contemned, either for judgment or style. sir henry saville, grave and truly lettered. sir edwin sandys, excellent in both. lord egerton, a grave and great orator, and best when he was provoked. but his learned and able, but unfortunate successor, is he that hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent greece or haughty rome. * in short, within this view, and about this time, were all the wits born that could honour a language or help study. now things daily fall; wits grow downward and eloquence grows backward. so that he may be so named and stand as the mark and -------- of our language_. ** * judge holmes ("authorship of shakespeare," third edition, p. ) italicises these words to point the allusion to bacon, and to notice that the passage in "the discoveries," immediately preceding the above, is a direct allusion to bacon, while the phrase "insolent greece and haughty rome" occurs in line thirty-nine of the verses eulogistic of william shakespeare. ** "timber, or discoveries made upon men and matter: as they have flowed out of his daily readings, or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of the time." by ben jonson. "works," by peter whalley, vol. vii., p. . only fourteen years before, this ben jonson had published the verses which _made_ william shakespeare. only fourteen years before he had asserted--what the world has taken his word for, and never questioned from that day to this--that his "best beloved" william shakespeare had been the "soul of the age"--"not for an age, but for all time"--and his works "such as neither man nor muse can praise too much!" we have no means of knowing the precise date at which ben jonson's grief for his dead friend cooled, { }and his feelings experienced a change. but he leaves behind him, at his death, this unembellished memoranda, this catalogue "of all the wits" living in his day, who, in his opinion, "could honour a language or help study," and in this catalogue he inserts no such name as william shakespeare; william shakespeare, the name--not only of the "soul" and epitome of all that--only, about fourteen years ago--he had deemed worth mentioning among men "born about this time;" but of his late most intimate and bosom friend! had the "discoveries" preserved an absolute silence concerning william shakespeare, the passage we have quoted might, perhaps, have been considered a studied and deliberate slur on his dead friend's memory, on the part of jonson, made for reasons best known to jon-son himself. but they are not silent. they devote a whole paragraph to william shakespeare--but in the proper place; that is to say, not among "the wits who could honour a language or help study," but among the author's personal acquaintance. this is all there is of this paragraph as to the real william shakespeare: _i remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to shakespeare, that in his writing (whatever he penned) he never blotted out a line. my answer hath been, "would he had blotted out a thousand!" which they thought a malevolent speech. i had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. and to justify mine own candour (for i loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry, as much as any). he was (indeed) honest and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasie, brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. sufflaminan{ }dus erat, as augustus said of haterius. his wit was in his own power, would that the rule of it had been so too! many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person of cæsar--one speaking to him--"cæsar, thou dost me wrong;" he replied, "cæsar never did wrong, but with just cause," and such like; which were ridiculous. but he redeemed his vices with his virtues. there was ever more in him to be praised than pardoned._ * that is every word which a man who "loved him" could say of william shakespeare!--that he was a skilled and careful penman, "never blotting out a line;" that he talked too fast, sometimes, and had to be checked; that, in playing the part of cæsar on the stage, somebody interpolated the speech, "cæsar, thou dost me wrong," and he made a bull in response; ** and that he (jonson) wished he (shakespeare) had blotted out a thousand of his lines. blot out a thousand shakespearean lines!--a thousand of the priceless lines of the peerless book we call "shakespeare!" * "works," cited ante, vol. vii., p. . ** possibly this may have occurred in playing the very version of the "cæsar" we now possess, though there are, of course, no such lines to be found there. fancy the storm which would follow such a vandal proposition to-day! ben jonson does not specify _which_ thousand he would have expurgated, but would be satisfied with any thousand, taken anywhere at random out of the writings of his "soul of the age," the man "not of an age, but for all time!" and yet it is on the uncorroborated word of this man jonson that we build monuments to the stratford lad, and make pilgrimages to his birthplace and worship his ashes, and quarrel about the spelling of his name! if there is not a { }strong smack of patronage in this prose allusion to shakespeare, we confess ourselves unable to detect its flavor. very possibly the fact was that, so far from having been an admirer of william shakespeare, ben jonson saw through his pretensions, and only through policy sang his praises against the stomach of his sense. for ben jonson, though one of the ripest scholars of the day (we have history as authority for that), was poor and a borrower, over head and ears in debt to shakespeare; he was a stock actor on the rich managers boards, and could not take the bread out of his own mouth. but the poor scholar, and still poorer actor, could yet indulge himself, and take his covert fling at the rich charlatan:= ```"though need make many poets, and some such ```as art and nature have not bettered much, ```yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage ```as he dare serve the ill customs of the age: ```or purchase your delight at such a rate ```as for it, he himself must justly hate. ```to make a child now swaddled, to proceed ```man, and then shoot up in one beard and weed-- ```past threescore years, or with three rusty swords ```and help of some few foot and half foot words-- ```fight over york and lancaster's long jars, ```and in the tiring-house bring wounds to scars! ```he [_that is, ben himself_] rather prays you will be pleased to see ```one such to-day, as other plays should be; `````[_that is, one he wrote himself _] ```where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, ```nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please."= ben says this himself--in the prologue to his "every man in his humour." again, in the "induction" to his "bartholomew { }fair," he has this fling at "the tempest:" "if there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it," he says, "nor a nest of antiques? he is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such like drolleries." * * "the tempest" of that day in william shakespeare's hands, then, was a "drollery." see some curious evidence going to prove that, while the titles of the plays always remain the same, the plays themselves may have been different at different times. 'post vi, "the new theory." dr. carl elze (essays on shakespeare. london. macmillans. ), thinks that jonson meant a hit at shakespeare when he says, in volpone, "all our english authors will steal." but that jonson never himself believed, or expressed himself as believing, that william shakespeare was a poet (except in this rhymed panegyric which heminges and condell prefixed to the first folio), there is still further and perhaps stronger proof. three years after william shakespeare's death, ben jonson paid a visit to william drummond of hawthornden, and spent with him the greater part of the month of april, (or, as some fix it, the month of january, in that year). drummond was a poet himself, and, it is said, his poetical reputation was what had attracted jonson to make the visit. at any rate, he did visit him, and drummond kept notes of jonson's conversation. these notes are in the form of entries or items, grouped under drummond's own headings or titles, such as: "his acquaintance and behavior with poets living with him." daniel was at jealousies with him. drayton feared him, and he esteemed not of him. that francis beaumont loved too much himself and his own verses. { }that sir john roe loved him; and when they, too, were ushered by my lord sullblk from a mask, roe wrott a moral epistle to him which began: _that next to playes, the court and the state were the best. god threateneth kings, kings lords, (as) lords do us._ he beat marston and took his pistol from him. sir w. alexander was not half kinde unto him, and neglected him, because a friend to drayton. that sir r. aiton loved him dearly. nid field was his schollar, and he had read to him the satyres of horace, and some epigrames of martiall. that markam (who added his arcadia) was not of the number of the faithfull, (i. e), poets, and but a base fellow. that such were day and middleton. that chapman and fletcher were loved by him. overbury was first his friend, then turn'd his mortall enimie. etc., etc. there are, in all, between two and three hundred entries of a similar character. now, in one of these entries, jonson is represented as saying that he "esteemeth done the first poet in the world in some things;" but there is nothing put in jonson's month, in the whole category, about the "star of poets," save that, in another place, is the following item: "that shakspeer wanted arte," and, further on, the following: "shakespeare wrote a play, brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in bohemia, when there is no see neer by some miles." * * works of ben jonson. by william gifford. edited by lt. col. francis cunningham. vol. iii., p. . london. i. c. hotten, & picadilly. these notes were first printed by mr. david laing, who discovered them among the manuscripts of sir { }robert sibbald, a well-known antiquary and physician of edinburgh. they were preserved in the form of a copy in sibbald's handwriting. sibbald was a friend of the bishop sage, who edited drummond's works in . these notes were believed by sir walter scott to be genuine, and, by his advice, were printed first in the "archaeological scotica," in or about . at any rate, they were never printed by sibbald himself, nor used by him in any way which suggested a motive for forgery, and, internally, they agree with ben jonson's own "discoveries," especially as to his (jonson's) estimate of william shakespeare. and yet ben johnson was the beneficiary and friend of william shakespeare--the "immortal shakespeare"--whom ben "honours _this side_ idolatry," but whom we are not fearful of passing the bounds of idolatry in worshiping to-day. ben johnson was an overworked rhymester, and made his rhymes do double and treble duty. the first couplet of the prologue just cited= ```" though need make many poets, and some such ```as art and nature have not bettered much"--= needs only a little hammering over to become the= ```"while i confess thy writings to be such ```as neither man nor muse can praise too much"--= of the mortuary verses which--as we say--made shakespeare shakespeare. when the rich manager's alleged works were to be collected, the poor scholar, who had borrowed money of him in his lifetime, was called upon for a tribute. but the poor scholar for{ }bore to draw on the storehouse of his wits, though willing: to hammer over some of his old verses for the occasion. he once assured posterity, in rhyme, that they must not "give nature all," but remember his gentle shakespeare's art, how he would "sweat and strike the second heat upon the muse's anvil" (in other words, bring by long toil the firstlings of his genius to artificial perfection). and yet he deliberately tells drummond, long years after, and puts it down in black and white over his own. signature, that this same shakespeare "wanted art," and that the great trouble with him was that he talked too much. is it possible that the ideal shakespeare, the mighty miracle-working demigod, is only the accidental creation of a man who was poking fun at a shadow? let us not proceed to such a violent surmise, but return to a serious consideration of mr. ben jonson's unimpassioned prose. if the paragraph from the "discoveries" last above quoted--which estimates william shakespeare precisely as history estimates him, namely, as a clever fellow, and a player in one of the earliest theaters in london--is not to be regarded as a confession that ben jonson's verses were written (or rewritten) more out of generosity to his late friend's memory--rather in the exuberance of a poetic license of apotheosis--than with a literal adherence to truth;* then it must be conceded that the result is such a facing both ways as { }hangs any jonsonian testimony in perfect equilibrium as to the shakespearean controversy, and entitles ben jonson himself, as a witness for anybody or to any thing, to simply step down and out. * a confession, say the baconians, that jonson, as long as bacon lived, was eager to serve him by shouldering on his incognito--in poetry--while he was under no compunction to do so in his own posthumous remains. see post v, the baconian theory. for, admitting that his poetry is just as good as his prose--and probably the shakespeareans would care to assert no more than that--it is a legal maxim that a witness who swears for both sides swears for neither; and a rule of common law no less than of common sense that his evidence must be ruled out, since no jury can be called upon to believe and disbelieve one and the same witness at the same time. and so we are relieved from accounting for the "jonson testimony," as did lord palmerston, by saying: "o, those fellows always hang together; or, its just possible jonson may have been deceived like the rest;" * or by asking ourselves if a score of rhymes by ben johnson, a fellow craftsman (not sworn to, of course, and not nearly as tropical or ecstatic as they might have been, and yet been quite justifiable under the rule nil nisi)--are to outweigh all historic certainty? if jonson had written a life, or memoir, or "recollections," or "table-talk," of william shakespeare, it might have been different. but he only gives us a few cheap lines of poetical eulogy; and fact is one thing, and poetry--unless there is an exception in this instance--is conceded to be altogether another. * frazer's magazine, november, , p. . but since numberless good people are suspicious of rules of law as applied to evidence, regarding them as over-nice, finical, and as framed rather to keep out truth than to let it in, let-us waive the legal maxim, { }and admit the jonsonian testimony to be one single, consistent block of contemporary evidence. but, no sooner do we do this, than we find ourselves straightway floundering in a slough of absurdities for greater, it seems to us, than any we have yet encountered. to illustrate: it is necessary to the shakespearean theory that in the days of elizabeth and james there should have been not only a _man_, but a genius, a wit, and a poet, of the name of william shakespeare; and that all these--man, genius, wit, and poet--should have been one and the same individual. taking all the jonsonian testimony, prose and poetry, together, such an individual there was, and his name was william shakespeare, as required. but--still following jonson's authority--at the same period and in the same town of london there was a certain gentleman named bacon, who was "learned and able," and who had, moreover, "filled up all numbers--and" in the same days "performed that which may be compared either to insolent greece or haughty rome." we have, then, not only a "wit and poet" named shakespeare, but a "wit and poet" named bacon; and, since jonson is nowhere too modest to admit that he himself was a "wit and poet," we have, therefore, actually not one but three of a kind, at each other's elbows in london, in the golden age of english literature. we have already seen that, of this trio, two--bacon and shakespeare, if we are to believe the shakespeareans--were personally unknown to each other. it is worth our while to pause right here, and see what this statement involves. they are all three--bacon, jonson, and shakespeare--dwelling in the same town at the same mo{ }ment; are, all three, writers and wits, earning their living by their pens. ben jonson is the mutual friend. he is of service to both--he translates bacon's english into latin for him, * and writes plays for william shakespeare's stage, and, as we have seen, he ultimately becomes the boswell of both, and runs from one to the other in rapture. * jonson assisted dr. hackett, afterward bishop of litchfield and coventry, in translating the essays of lord bacon into latin. (whalley, "life of ben jonson," vol. i. of works, cited ante.) jonson was at this time "on terms of intimacy with lord bacon."--(w. h. smith, "bacon and shakespeare," p. .) his admiration for bacon, on the one hand (according to his prose), amounts to a passion; his admiration for shakespeare, on the other hand (according to his poetry), amounts to a passion, he declares (in prose) that bacon "hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared and preferred either to _insolent greece or haughty rome_." he declares (in poetry) of shakespeare that he may be left alone--= ````"....for comparison ```of all that insolent greece or haughty borne ```sent forth, or since did from their ashes come."= and yet he never, while going from one to the other, mentions shakespeare to bacon or bacon to shakespeare; never "introduces" them or brings them together; never gives his soul's idol bacon any "order" to his soul's idol shakespeare's theater, that this absolutely inimitable bacon (who has surpassed insolent greece and haughty rome) may witness the masterpieces of this absolutely inimitable shakespeare{ }(who has likewise surpassed insolent greece and haughty rome); this boswell of a jonson, go-between of two men of repute and public character, travels from one to the other, sings the praises of each to the world outside (using the same figures of speech for each), and, in the presence of each, preserves so impenetrable a silence as to the other, that of the two public characters themselves each is absolutely ignorant of the other's existence! and yet they ought to have been close friends, for they borrowed each other's verses, and loaned each other paragraphs to any extent. persons there have been who asserted, as we shall see, on merely the internal evidence of their writings, that bacon and "shakespeare" were one and the same man, and that what appeared to be "parallelisms" and coincidences in bacon and "shakespeare" were thus to be accounted for. but, admitting their separate identity, it is certain either that the natural philosopher borrowed his exact facts from the comedies of the playwright, or that the playwright borrowed the speeches for his comedies from the natural philosopher; either of which looks very much like, at least, a speaking acquaintance. for, as we shall see further on, * some of these "parallelisms" are not coincidences, but something very like _identities_. * post, part v, the baconian theory. it will not lighten this new difficulty to rule out the prose and leave in the poetry, for we can not annihilate francis bacon nor yet william shakespeare from their places in history. if, however, the jonsonian poetry _were_ wiped out, the jonsonian prose would receive, at least, a negative corroboration, as follows: { }at the same time that bacon and shakespeare are living, unknown to each other respectively, in london, there also dwell there three other gentlemen--sir walter raleigh, edmund spenser, and sir tobie matthew. we, therefore, actually have four well-known gentlemen of the day in london, gentlemen of elegant tastes--poets, men about town, critics--who, if the town were being convulsed by the production at a theater of by far the most brilliant miracles of genius that the world had ever seen, ought not, in the nature of things, to have been utterly uninformed as to the circumstance. we do not add to this list southampton, essex, rutland, montgomery, and the rest, because these latter have left no memorandum or chronicle of what they saw and heard on manuscript behind them. but the first four have left just precisely such memoranda of their times as are of assistance to us here. bacon, in his "apothegms," spenser in his poems, * and raleigh and matthew in their re{ }mains--especially matthew--who, like bacon, kept a diary, who wrote letters and postscripts, and was as fond of playing at boswell to his favorites as jonson himself--appear to have stumbled on no trace of such a character as "shakespeare" in all their sauntering about london. * spenser's well-known lines in "colin clout's come home again," written in , are: and there, though last not least, is Ætion, a gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, whose muse, full of high thought's invention, doth--life himself--heroically sound." "Æton" is generally assumed by commentators to stand in the verse for "shakespeare." but it is difficult to imagine how this can possibly be more than mere speculation, since spenser certainly left no annotation explanatory of the passage, and it does not identify itself as a reference to shakespeare. in "the tears of the muses," line , there is an allusion which on a first glance appears so pat, that the bard of avon has long been called "our pleasant willy" on the strength of it. it runs: "and ho, the man whom nature's self had made, to mock herself and truth to imitate with kindly counter under mimick shade, our pleasant willy, ah, is dead of late: with whom all joy and jolly merriment is also deaded, and in dolour dreut." but, since spenser died some seventeen years before shakespeare, and if--as must be supposed from their flippancy--these lines point to the enforced or voluntary retirement or silence of some writer, rather than to his death--they appear more nearly to refer to sidney than to shakespeare. and this now appears to be conceded. (see morley's "english men of letters: spenser," by dean church. american edition, harpers, new york, , p. .) besides, "the tears of the muses" was written in , when shakespeare was a lad of sixteen, holding horses at the theater door. "will," or "wib," appears to have been the ordinary nickname of a poet in those days.--r. gr. white's "shakespeare," vol. i., p. , note. especially on one occasion does sir tobie devote himself to a subject-matter wherein, if there had been any "shakespeare" within his ken, he could very properly--and would, we think, very naturally--have mentioned him. in the "address to the reader," prefixed to one of his works, * he says, speaking of his own date, "we have also rare compositions made among us which look so many fair ways at once that i doubt it will go near to pose any other nations of europe to muster out in any age four men who, in so many respects, should be able to excel { }four such us we are able to show--cardinal wolsey, sir thomas more, sir philip sidney, and sir francis bacon. for they were all a kind of monsters in their various ways," etc. * "a collection of letters made by sir tobie matthew, with a character of the most excellent lady lucy, countess of carlisle. to which are added many letters of his several persons of honour, who were contemporary with him." loudon, . besides, these four--or, dismissing spenser, who was a poet exclusively--then three, bacon, raleigh, and tobie matthew--however else dissimilar, were any thing but blockheads or anchorites. they were men of the court and of the world. they mingled among their fellow-men, and (by a coincidence which is very useful to us here) none of them were silent as to what they met and saw during their careers. they both live and move in the very town and in the very days when this rare poetry which emerson says "the greatest minds value most" was appearing. but, if william shakespeare was the author of it all, how is it possible to escape the conviction that not one of them all--not bacon, a man of letters himself, a student of antique not only, but of living and contemporary literature, and overfond of writing down his impressions for the benefit of posterity (even if wanting in the dramatic or poetic perception, the scholarship of the plays could not have escaped him; and had these plays been the delight and town talk of all london, as mr. grant white says they were, some morsel of them must have reached his ear or eye)--not raleigh, courtier, gallant, man-about-town, "curled darling," and every thing of that sort (who probably was not afraid to go to a theater for fear of injuring his morals)--not tobie matthew, who was all this latter with less of responsibility and mental balance--ever so much as heard his (shakespeare's) name mentioned? that not one of these ever heard of a name that was in every{ }body's mouth--of a living man so famous that, as we shall presently consider, booksellers were using his name to make their wares sell, that his plays were fill-ins: the most fashionable theater in london from cockpit to the dome; whose popularity was so exalted that the great queen elizabeth herself stepped down from the throne and walked across his stage to do him honor, to whom in after days, her successor king was to write an autograph letter (for these must all be considered in the argument, though, as we have seen, the king james story is only one of the "yarns," * cooked for occasion by commentators, or the growth of rumor--in orthodox procession from "might have been" to "was"--and so, doubtless, is the other) is a trifle incredible to a mind not already adjusted to swallow any and every fable in this connection rather than accept the truth of history! to be sure, it is not absolutely impossible that these three men should have been cognizant of william shakespeare's existence without mentioning him in their favors to posterity. * the story of elizabeth's order for "falstaff in love," resulting in the production of "the merry wives of windsor" (which would prove that, whatever else she was, elizabeth was no anthony comstock), is, to our mind, another sample of the same procession. hazlitt (lit. of europe, part iii., chap. , sec. iii., note,) is especially incredulous as to the king james letter. the truth is that shakespeare, far from being flattered by james, was actually in disgrace, and not so much as to be mentioned in that monarch's hearing, from having permitted a representation of the sacred person of royalty on his stage, as is authenticated by the well- known lines of davies: "hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport, etc., etc." but, under all the circumstances, it is vastly improbable. at any rate, we fancy it would not be easy to conceive of { }three englishmen in london to-day, in --let us say mr. gladstone, mr. browning, and mr. swinburne--without collusion, writing down a list of their most illustrious contemporaries, and not one of them mentioning mr. tennyson! or, assuming that tennyson is the admitted first of poets of the victorian age (as mr. ben jonson and all the commentators at his heels, down to our own mr. grant white, tell us that "william shakespeare" was the admitted first of poets of his contemporary elizabethan age), it would not be the easiest thing in the world to conceive three chroniclers--mr. gladstone, mr. browning, and mr. swinburne-sitting themselves down to an enumeration, not of their illustrious contemporaries in general, but of their contemporaneous men of letters only, and, by a coincidence, omitting any mention of the great first of poets of their day! either, then, it seems to us we are to infer that three such men as raleigh, bacon, (who, emerson says, "took the inventory of the human understanding, for his time,") and his satellite matthew, had never so much as heard that there was any shakespeare, in an age which we moderns worship as the age of shakespeare, or that there was no "shakespeare" for them to hear about; that "william shakespeare" was the name of an actor and manager in the globe and blackfriars play-houses, of a man not entitled, any more than any of his co-actors and co-managers in those establishments, to enumeration among the illustrious ornaments of an illustrious age, the stars of the golden age of english! of course, it can be well urged that all this is mere negative evidence; that not only three but three million of men might be found who had never mentioned { }or ever heard of shakespeare, without affecting the controversy either way. but, under the circumstances, in view of what the shakespearean plays _are_, and of what their author must have been, and of when and where these three men--bacon, raleigh, and matthew--lived and flourished, the chronicles left by these three men--bacon, raleigh, and matthew--constitute, at the very least, a "negative pregnant" not to be omitted in any review of our controversy that can lay the faintest claim to exhaustiveness or sincerity; and, moreover, a negative pregnant which--if we admitted all the ben jonson testimony, in prose and poetry, as evidence on the one side--could not be excluded as evidence on the other. in which event it is fairest to the shakespeareans to rule ben out altogether. ** * and we might add to these sir john davies, selden, sir john beaumont, henry vaughn, lord clarendon and others. ** it is fair to note that another "negative pregnant" arises here, to which the shakespeareans are as fairly entitled as the other side to theirs. sir tobie matthew died in . he survived shakespeare thirty-nine years, bacon twenty-nine years, and raleigh thirty-seven years! left in possession of the secret of the baconian authorship, how could such a one as matthew let the secret die with him? although we do not meet with it among the arguments of the shakespeareans, this strikes us as about the strongest they could present, except that the answer might be that at the date of matthew's death, , the shakespearean plays were not held in much repute, or that matthew might have reserved his unbosoming of the secret too long; but it is only one fact among a thousand. besides, ben is what the scotchmen call "a famous witness" (if the commentators, who enlarge on shakespeare's bounty and loans to him, can be relied upon), as being under heavy pecuniary obligation to the stage manager, and so his testimony is to be scrutinized with the { }greatest care, though he certainly did not allow his obligations to over-master him when writing the "discoveries." but, in any event, it would be easier to believe that ben jonson once contradicted himself for the sake of a rhyme, and to "do the handsome thing" by the memory of an old friend and unpaid creditor, than to swallow the incredible results of a literal version of his prose and poetry, read by the light of the bacon, raleigh, and matthew remains. and the conclusion of the matter, it seems to us, must be: either that the poetry was the result of his obligations to william shakespeare and to william shakespeare's memory, or that, having sworn on both sides, mr. ben jonson stands simply dehors the case--a witness for neither. it is not, then--it is very far from being--because we know so little of the man shakespeare that we disbelieve in his authorship of the great works ascribed to him. it is because we know so much. no sooner did men open their histories, turn up the records and explore the traditions and trace the gossip of' the elizabethan days, than the facts stared them in the face. long before any "baconian theory" arose to account for these anomalies: at the instant these plays began to be valued for any thing else than their theatrical properties, the difficulty of "marrying the man to his verse" began to be troublesome. "to be told that he played a trick on a brother actor in a licentious amour, or that he died of a drunken frolic, does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote 'lear,'" cried mr. hallam. * * "i laud," says hallam, "the labors of mr. collier, mr. hunter, and other collectors of such crumbs, though i am not sure that we should not venerate shakespeare as much if they had left him undisturbed in his obscurity.... if there was a shakespeare of earth, as i suspect, there was also one of heaven, and it is of him we desire to know something." "every accession of in { }formation we obtain respecting the man shakespeare renders it more and more difficult to detect in him the poet," cries mr. william henry smith. * "i am one of the many," testifies mr. furness, "who have never been able to bring the life of william shakespeare and the plays of shakespeare within a planetary space of each other; are there any other two things in the world more incongruous?" ** * "bacon and shakespeare," p. . ** in a letter to judge holmes, printed at p. , third edition, of the latter's "authorship of shakespeare." it was necessary, therefore, in order to preserve a belief in the shakespearean authorship, either that william shakespeare should be historically known as a man of great mental power, a close student of deep insight into nature and morals--a poet, philosopher, and all the rest--or else that, by a failure of the records, history should be silent altogether as to his individuality, and the lapse of time have made it impossible to recover any details whatever as to his tastes, manners, and habits of life. in such a case, of course, there would remain no evidence on the subject other than that of the plays themselves, which would, of course, prove him precisely the myriad-minded genius required. in other words, it was only necessary to so cloud over _the facts_ as to make the "shakespearean miracle" to be, _not_ that william shakespeare had written the works, but--that history should be so silent concerning a "shakespeare!" so long as the shakespeareans could cry, "behold a mys{ }terious dispensation of providence--that, of the two mightiest poets the world has ever held--homer and william shakespeare--we know absolutely nothing!"--so long as they could assign this silence to the havoc of a great deluge or a great fire, just so long the name "william shakespeare" was as good and satisfactory a name as any other, and nobody could propose a better. but they can cry so no longer. it is not because we know so _little_, but because we know _so much_ about the stratford boy, that we decline to accept him as the master we not only admire and love, but in whose pages we find our wisdom vain and our discovery anticipated. as a matter of fact, through the accident of his having been a part-proprietor in one of the earliest english play-houses, we know pretty accurately what manner of man he was. we know almost every thing about him, in short, except--what we _do_ know about homer--that the words now attributed to him were _his_. homer, at least, we can trace to his "iliad" and his "odyssey," as he sang them in fragments from town to town. but neither to his own pen nor his own lips, and only problematically (as we shall see further on) to his own stage, can we trace the plays so long assigned to william shakespeare. let the works be placed in our hands for the first time anonymously; given the chronicles of the age of elizabeth and james in which to search for an author of these works, would any thing we found in either lead us to pronounce william shakespeare their author? and has any thing happened _since_ to induce us to set aside the record and substitute an act of pure faith, of faith blind and obedient, and make it almost a religion to blindly and obediently believe that william shakes{ }peare was not the man he was, lest we should be "disrespectful to our birthright?" nothing whatever has happened since, except the labors of the commentators. by the most painfully elaborate explorations on the wrong track, by ingenious postulation upon fictitious premises, and by divers illicit processes of majors and minors, while steering carefully clear of the records, they have evolved a butcher, a lawyer, a physician, a divinity student, a a schoolmaster, a candlestick-maker--but, after all, a shakespeare. that the error, in the commencement, was the result of carelessness, there can be no doubt. but that, little by little--each commentator, either in rivalry for a new fact, and jealous to be one item ahead of his competitor (even if obliged to invent it out of hand), or being too indolent to examine for himself, or too subservient to authority to rebel--it grew to vast proportions, we have only to look at the huge "biographies" of the last half century to be assured. it will not detain us long, as an example of these, to briefly glance at the labors of one of the most intrepid of the ilk to identify the traditional poet with the traditional man. in , thomas de quincy contributed to the "encyclopædia britannica" its article "shakespeare." that about the story of the prankish stratford lad, who loved, and wooed and won a farmer's daughter, and between the low, smoky-raftered cottage in stratford town and the snug little thatch at shottery trudged every sunset to do his courting, there lingers the glamour of youth, and love, and poetry, no patron of the "encyclopædia" would probably have doubted. but that a staid and solemn work, designed for exact reference, should have printed { }so whimsical a fancy sketch as mr. de quincy supplied to it, and that it should have been allowed to remain there, must certainly command surprise. there can surely be complaint as to the variety of the performance. mr. de quincy very ably and gravely speculates as to the size of the dowry old hathaway gave his daughter; as to whether old john shakespeare mortgaged his homestead to keep up appearances; and whether that gentleman received the patronage of stratford corporation when (as there is no direct authority for saying they did not) they had occasion to present a pair of gloves to some favored nobleman (and this portion of the composition winds up with a history of gloves and glove-making which can not fail to interest and instruct the reader). and his speculations as to whether the messengers who sped to worcester for the "marriage-lines" did or did not ride in such hot haste, in view of an expected but premature susannah, that they gave vicious orthographies of the names "shakspeare" and "hathaway" to the aged clerk who drew the document, are, especially pretty reading. but--with facilities in for writing a history of the stratford lad, which the stratford lad's own contemporaries and near neighbors, two hundred years and more before mr. de quincy, seem never to have possessed--mr. de quincy quite surpasses himself in setting us exactly right as to william shakespeare. and, first, as to the birthday. there has always been a sort of feeling among englishmen that their greatest poet ought to have had no less a birthday than the day dedicated to their patron saint. the stratford parish records certifying to the christening of william shakespeare on the th day of april, { } (which mr. de quincy forgets was "old style," and so, in any event, twelve days before the corresponding date in the present or "new style"), and the anniversary of st. george being fixed for celebration on the d of april, it had come to be unanimously resolved by the commentators that, in warwickshire, it was the custom to christen infants on the third day after birth, and that, therefore, william shakespeare was born on the anniversary of st. george, april , . to baptise a three-days-old baby, in an english april, a period five days earlier than, in the mild latitude of palestine, the israelites thought it necessary to circumcise their infants, seems a very un-english proceeding. so mr. de quincy, who would rather perish than mislead, thinks, after all, the birth might have been a day earlier. "after all," he says, "william _might_ have been born on the d. only one argument," he gravely proceeds, "has sometimes struck us for supposing that the d might be the day, and not the d, which is, that shakespeare's sole granddaughter, lady barnard, was married on the d of april, ten years exactly from the poet's death, and the reason for choosing this day might have had a reference to her illustrious grandfather's birthday, which, there is good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in the family for generations!" but even mr. de quincy appears to concede that, in writing history, we must draw the line somewhere; for he immediately adds, "still this choice may have been an accident" (so many things, that is to say, are likely to be considered in fixing a marriage-day, besides one's grandfather's birthday!), "or governed merely by reason of convenience. and, { }on the whole, it is as well, perhaps, to acquiesce in the old belief that shakespeare was born and died on the d of april. we can not do wrong if we drink to his memory both on the d and d." * * mr. de quincy's own estimate of this performance we take from a preface to the article itself, in the american edition of his collected works (boston: shepard & gill, ), vol. xv., p. : "no paper ever cost me so much labor; parts of it have been recomposed three times over." and again, "william shakespeare's article cost me more intense labor than any i ever wrote in my life and, i believe, if you will examine it, you will not complain of want of novelty." we should say not. mr. de quincy's proposition to drink twice instead of once ought to forever secure his popularity among englishmen; but it remains, nevertheless, remarkable that a ponderous encyclopaedia should admit this sort of work among its articles on sugar, snakes, sardinia, soap, savonarola, and its other references in s! like his fellow shakespeareans, mr. de quincy makes no use of aubrey, or the old clerk, or the rev. richard davies, or any one else who, having lived at dates inconveniently contiguous to the real william shakespeare, were awkward customers about whom it was best to say nothing. he cannot claim never to have heard of aubrey, because he quotes him as saying that william shakespeare was "a handsome, well-shaped man." but this is the only allusion he makes to aubrey or to any body else who lived within eyesight or ear-shot of the william shakespeare who (we admit), if a well-conducted person, _ought_ reasonably to have been the man mr. de quincy and his ilk turn him out, and not the man his neighbors, or any body who happened to be born within a hundred years { }of him, knew him. as to the difficulties coleridge, goethe, schlegel, richter, carlyle, palmerston, emerson, gervinius, hallam, holmes, william henry smith, furness, and delia bacon find so insurmountable--namely, as to where the material of the plays came from--mr. de quincy skips over these with his airy two terms at the little grammar-school on stratford high street! (the identical desk which william occupied during this period of attendance at that institution of learning was promptly supplied by the stratford guides, upon hearing mr. de quincy's discovery.) "old aubrey," two hundred years nearer his subject, was careful to give his school-master's story "for what it was worth," admitting that his authority for the statement that william shakespeare was a school-master was only a rumor, founded on the statement of one "beeston;" but who was "beeston?" some of our modern commentators have conjectured that possibly william, being a sort of model or head boy, was trusted to hear some of the little boys' lessons, which gave rise to the "school-master" story. but mr. de quincy allows no demurrer nor doubt to his assertions in the encyclopædia britannica. and for these "two terms" (of course), no further authority than himself being necessary, he vouchsafes none. such dry things as references are gracefully compensated for by favoring the reader in search for shakespearean data with two dissertations upon the loveliness of female virtue, one of which covers fourteen pages octavo. * his cue has had prolific fol{ }lowing. * of sheppard & gill's reprint (pp. , - ). but if mr. de quincy could have lived until november, , even he might have been taught something. the rev. john bayley, in an article on "the religion of shakespeare," in the "sunday magazine" (new york: frank leslie, november, , p. ), says of william shakespeare," "during the last years of his life it is stated that he and his family attended the parish church where the rev. richard byfield, an eminent puritan minister, and father of the distinguished commentator on the epistle to the colossians, commenced his ministry, a. d. ." of course, the reverend contributor to the "sunday magazine" does not in-form us where this fact "is stated," but concludes from the fact (he is sure it is a fact) that shakespeare was "during the last years of his life the constant hearer of this eminent and energetic preacher of the gospel," and that "we may reasonably hope for the best of consequences." so simple a process has shakespeare-making become! now-a-days our "biographies" of william shakespeare are huge tomes of elizabethan and other antiquarian lore, commentary, conjecture, argumentation; that stupefy us, as it were, by mere bulk and show of research, into accepting the whole rather than plunge into so vast and shoreless a sea of apparent labor, and, therefore, alleged learning. for such is the indolence of man, that the bulkier the book the less likely is it to be read or refuted. and so, in view of the great eye-filling books labeled "biographies" of william shakespeare--volumes commensurate with the idea of a life which might, in time at least, have compassed the mighty works--one need not doubt that "william shakespeare" was the name of the marvelous man who wrote the plays. but, when one left the fiction of mr. de quincy and his ilk, and was forced to confront the william shakespeare who wrote the lucy lampoon and the epitaph on elias james, who stuck calves and stole { }deer, the difficulty only recurred with redoubled emphasis. it is not, of course, because william stuck the calves and stole the deer, because he wrote the lampoon or the epitaph, nor because he was son (or apprentice, as some lay), to a butcher or a glover, a tallow-chandler or a seedsman, that he is conceived to have been unequal to the shakespearean authorship. there never yet was cradle too lowly to be the cradle of genius, or line too ignoble for its genesis. george stephenson was a colliery-stoker, turner was the son of a barber, and faraday the son of a horseshoer. coleridge was a charity-lad, and the number of tanners' and tallow-chandlers' offspring, without whose names history could not be written, is something amazing. we may trace the genius of turner from the first impulse of his pencil to its latest masterpiece, but we can not find that he discovered the solar spectrum or described the edison phonograph. he knew and practiced what he was _taught_ (albeit he taught himself), and died quite contented to leave his own works behind him. robert burns was fully as unlettered and as rustic a plowboy as could be desired to prove the mighty miracle of genius. his history, up to a certain point, is the very duplicate of the history of william shakespeare, the butcher's boy and prodigy of stratford village. both were obscure, schoolless, and grammarless. but, in the case of robert burns, this heaven-born genius did not set him straightway on so lofty a pinnacle that he could circumspect the past, and forecast the future, or guide his untaught pen to write of troy and egypt, of athens and cyprus, or to reproduce the very counterfeit civiliza{ }tions and manners of nations born and buried and passed into history a thousand years before he had been begotten, the very names of which were not dreamed of anywhere in the neighborhood of his philosophy; of the most unusual and hidden details of forgotten polities and commercial customs, such as, for instance, the exceptional usage of a certain trade in mitylene, the anomalous status of a moorish mercenary in command of a venetian army, of a savage queen of britain led captive by rome, or a thane of scotland under one of its primitive kings--matters of curious and occult research for antiquaries or dilettanti to dig out of old romances or treatises or statutes, rather than for historians to treat of or schools to teach! in the case of robert burns we are content not to ask too much, even of genius. let us be content if the genius of bobert burns could glorify the goodwives' fables of his wonted firesides and set in aureole the homeliest cipher in his vicinage, until a field-mouse became a poem or a milkmaid a venus! it were unreasonable to demand that this genius, this fire from heaven, at once and on the instant invest a letterless peasant-lad with all the lore and law which the ages behind him had shut up in clasped books and buried and forgotten--with all the learning that the past had gathered into great tomes and piled away in libraries. and yet, if bobert burns had sung of the punic wars or the return of the heraclides, some malone or dequincy or charles knight would doubtless--with history staring him in the face--have arisen to put his index-finger upon the sources of his authority. judging by the record in the case of william shakespeare, history is able to oppose no difficulty { }over which a malone or dequincy or charles knight can not easily clamber. if william shakespeare was a born genius, a true son of nature, his soul overflowing with a sense of the beauty of life and of love, land of all around him, we might expect to find his poems brimful of the sweet, downcast eyes of his anne, of sunny stratford fields, of shottery and the lordly oaks of charlecote--to find him, "fancy's child," warbling "his native wood-notes wild," indeed! but of troy, tyre, and epidamnium, of priam and cressid and cleopatra, of the propulsion of blood from the vital heart, and of the eternal mysteries of physics, who dreams that "sweetest shakespeare, fancy's child" could sing in the very speech and idiom of those forgotten towns and times, or within the mathematical exactitude of sciences that had not yet been treated of in books? or, again, john bunyan is a case in point. john bunyan was as squalid and irredeemable a tinker as ever flourished in the days when "a tinker was rogue by statute." * and yet he, according to macaulay, produced the second of the two books of which england should be proudest. ** what was the miracle in the case of john bunyan? he produced a book which, "while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.... this is the highest miracle of art, that things which{ }are not should be as though they were; that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. and this miracle the tinker has wrought." * cockayne vs. hopkins, lev., . ** "though there were many clever men in england during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. one of these minds produced the 'paradise lost,' and the other the 'pilgrim's progress.'" but this great praise was not abstracted from macaulay by wealth of antique learning, universal accuracy of information, or vivid portraiture of forgotten civilizations. there was no trace of bun-yan's perfect familiarity with plato and euripides, with galen, paracelsus, plautus, seneca, and the long line of authors down to boccaccio, rabelais, saxo-grammaticus, and the rest! the critic did not find in bunyan's pages the careful diction of a scholar, the sonorous speech of the ancients, or the elegant and punctilious norman of the court. "the bunyan vocabulary," says macaulay, "is the vocabulary of the common people. there is not an expression, if we except a few technical theological terms, which would puzzle the rudest peasant." in short, we need not pause, marvelous as are the pages of the "pilgrim's progress," to ask of john bunyan, as indeed we must ask of william shakespeare, the question, "how knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" peerless as the result all is, there is nothing in the writings of john bunyan which can not be accounted for by natural (that is to say, by what we have been obliged by the course of human experience to accept as not impossible) causes. "the years of bunyan's boyhood were those during which the puritan spirit was in the highest vigor over all england.... it is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to whom nature had given a powerful imagination and sensibility which amounted to a disease, should have been early haunted by religious terrors. before he was ten, his sports { }were interrupted by fits of remorse and despair, and bis sleep disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away with him.... he enters the parliamentary army, and, to the last, he loves to draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and fortresses, guns, trumpets, flags of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under its own banner.... his 'greatheart,' his 'captain boanerges, and his 'captain credence' are evidently portraits of which the originals were among those martial saints* who fought and expounded in fairfax's army.... he had been five years a preacher when the restoration put it in the power of the cavaliers... to oppress the dissenters.... he was flung into bedford jail, with pen and paper for company, etc., etc. here are the school and the experience, and the result is writings which show a keen mother wit, a great command of the homely mother tongue, an intimate knowledge of the english bible, and a vast and dearly bought spiritual experience." ** moreover, here is a scholar like macaulay striving to account for the extraordinary phenomenon of a "pilgrim's progress" written by a village tinker. but in the case of the at least equally extraordinary phenomenon of the shakespearean drama, the creation of a village butcher, the scholar has not yet been born to the shakespeareans who deems it necessary or profitable to try his hand at any such investigation. "where did he get his material?" "oh, he picked it up around stratford, somehow!" "but his learning?" "oh, he found it lying around the theater somewhere!" * "bunyan," in "encyclopaedia britannica," by macaulay. ** ibid. { }probably there were encyclopaedias to be fished ont of the mad of the bank-side in those days, of which we can find no mention in the chroniclers! and so, although scarcely a commentator on the glowing text has not paused in wonder at the vastness and magnificence of this material, leading him on to vaster and more magnificent treasuries at every step, so far as we are able to discover, not one of them has attempted to trace the intellectual experience of the man who wrought it all out of the book and volume of his unaided brain. not one of them has paused to ask the scriptural question, "how knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" for, it can not be too incessantly reiterated, the question is not, "was shakespeare a poet?" but, "had he access to the material from which the plays are composed?" admit him to have been the greatest poet, the most frenzied genius in the world; where did he get--not the poetry, but--the classical, philosophical, chemical, historical, astronomical, geological, etc., etc., information--the facts that crowd these pages? and let us not be credited, in these pages, with a malignant rejection of every tradition or anecdote that works to william shakespeare's renown, and a corresponding retention of every tradition or anecdote to his disparagement. for example, if it is asked, why reject the story of king james's autograph letter, and retain the story of the trespass on sir thomas lucy's deer? the answer must be: first; because, while there is nothing improbable in the latter, there is much of improbability in the former. king james was a king, and kings rarely write autograph letters to subjects. the lord chamberlain may give a sort of permission { }to a haberdasher to call himself haberdasher to queen victoria; but it would be vastly improbable that queen victoria should write an autograph letter to the haberdasher to that effect. second, because the poaching story (to use a legal test) appears to be so old that the memory of man runneth not to a time when it was not believed; whereas the king james story first appeared in the year , in a biographical notice affixed to an edition of the plays prepared by one bernard lintot. mr. lintot gave no authority for the statement whatever, except to say that it rested on the word of "a credible person then living." but everybody can appreciate the zeal and appetite with which rival biographers, like rival newspaper reporters, struggle to get hold of a new fact for their columns, and nobody will wonder that, after mr. lintot, no "biographer" omitted to mention it. as a matter of fact, the letter from king james and the letter from queen elizabeth, produced by young ireland, are equally genuine correspondence. but the stories of the latter class, while not beyond question, are at least not improbable, considering the record of the youth shakespeare at stratford, while those of the first are certainly improbable on their face, and can be in almost every case traced to their exact source. so the story of his holding horses, while by no means authentic, (mr white says it was not heard of until the middle of the last century), is by no means improbable, seeing that the lad ran away to london----and rowe and the old sexton both agree that he began--as self-made men do--at the bottom. the story of queen elizabeth's crossing the stage and dropping her glove, which shakespeare picked up and pre{ }sented with an impromptu, mr. white himself smiles at, with the remark that "the anecdote is plainly one made to meet the craving for personal details of shakespeare's life," * and he treats it as he does the "florio" in the british museum, supposed to have belonged to william shakespeare, because that name is written----after his mode--on a fly-leaf; with a pleasant wish that he were able to believe in it. * far from being of the class that kings delight to honor, it is simply impossible to turn one's researches into any channel that leads into the vicinity of stratford without noticing the fact that the shakespeare family left, in the neighborhoods where it flourished, one unmistakable trace familiar in all cases of vulgar and illiterate families; namely, the fact that they never knew or cared, or made an effort to know, of what vowels or consonants their own name was composed, or even to preserve the skeleton of its pronunciation. they answered--or made their marks--indifferently to "saxpir" or "chaksper;" or to any other of the thirty forms given by mr. grant white, ** or the fifty-five forms which another gentleman of elegant leisure has been able to collect. *** * shakespeare's works. boston, . vol. l, p. , in, and see a note to the same volume, pp. - , as to ratzei's ghost, surmised to be an allusion to shakespeare. * ib., p. . ** shakespeare's scholar, pp. - . *** george russel french, shakespeareana geologicana. p. . { } in the records of the town council of stratford, of which john shakespeare was no unimportant part, the name is written in fourteen different forms, which may be tabulated as follows:---- ~ times written shackesper. times written shackespere. times written shacksper. times written shackspere. times written shakespere. time written shaksper. times written shakspere. ~~ times written shakspeyr. times written shakysper. times written shakyspere. times written shaxpeare. times written shaxper. times written shaxpere. times written shaxspeare. ~~~ in the marriage bond of november , , it is twice written, each time shagspere. on the grave of susanna, it is shakespere; and on the other graves of the family, shakespeare, except that under the bust it is shakspeare. that is to say, just as many orthographies as there are tombstones and inscriptions. any lawyer's clerk who has had occasion to search for evidence among the uneducated classes, knows how certainly a lower or higher grade of intelligence will manifest itself primarily in an ignorance of or indifference to one's own name or a corresponding zeal for one's own identity, and anxiety that it shall be accurately "taken down." whether this infallible rule obtained in the days of the shakespeares or not, or whether a family, that was so utterly stolid as not to know if their patronymic was spelled with a "c," a "k," or an "x," could have appreciated and bestowed upon their child a classical education (not to ring the changes upon politics, philosophy, etc., right here), is for the reader to judge for himself. mr. w. h. smith maintains that shakespeare, like the rest of his family, was unable to write, and had learned, by practice only, to make the signature which he was assured was his name. mr. smith founds his theory on the fact that, in the will the word "seale" (in the formula, "witness my seale," etc.) is erased, { }and the word "hand" substituted. in a letter to mr. shedding, * mr. smith claims that this erasure and substitution prove that the draughtsman who prepared the shakespeare will, knowing that the testator could not write, did not suppose that he would sign his name, and so prepared it for the superimposition of his seal. "i know," says mr. smith, "that you will ingeniously observe that that might have been his belief, but that the fact could better have been proved if '_hand_' had been erased and '_seale_' inserted. but shakespeare, being proud of his writing, and, as this would probably be his last opportunity, insisted on exhibiting his 'hand.'" according to mr. smith, therefore, ben jonson's speech about "never blotting out a line," was redundant. but, whether able to write, or, like his ancestors and descendants, signing with a mark, he clearly cared no more than they how people spelled his name. a mr. george wise, of philadelphia, has been able to compile a chart exhibiting one thousand nine hundred and six ways of spelling the stratford boy's name; ** a commentary on the efforts of mr. halliwell and others, to establish the canonical orthography, which might well reduce them to despair. the fact is, that there can no more be a canonical spelling of the name shakespeare than there can be a canonical face of the boy william. the orthography of shakespeare, as now accepted, and the face now accepted as belonging to william of that name, are both modern inventions. * see third edition holmes' "authorship of shakespeare," p. . ** philadelphia, . see essays on shakespeare, carl elze; translated by schmitz (london, macmillan's ), note to p. . even the { }"best of that family" (according to the old clerk), william, when called to sign his own last will and testament (obliged by law to sign each of the three sheets upon which it was engrossed) three times, spelled his name a different way each time. his daughter judith lived and died without being able to spell or write it at all; milton, spenser, sidney, even gower and chaucer (whom even our own artemus ward pronounced "no speller"), had but one way of writing their own names--and never dreamed of one thousand nine hundred and six. the name is now supposed to have been simply "jacques-pierre" (james peter), which had been mispronounced--as englishmen mispronounce french--for unnumbered generations. * this is the present mispronunciation of jacques prevalent in warwickshire. and, such being the true origin of the name, it is, of course, natural to find it as we do, written in two words "shake-speare," in those days. it is not william shakespeare's fault that he sprang from an illiterate family, but that--after growing so rich as to be able to enjoy an income of $ , a year, he should never send his children--especially his daughter judith--to school, so that the poor girl, on being married, on the th day of february, , should be obliged to sign her marriage bond with a mark, shows, we think, that he was not that immortal he would have been had he written the topmost literature { }of the world--the shakespearean drama! but, still, this most unsatisfactory person--this man who answers, like mr. carroll's skipper, to "hi, or to any loud cry"--= ```"to what-you-may-call-um or what-is-his-name ```but especially thing-um-a-jig,"= or to whatever the nearest actor or scene-shifter may happen to hit on when he wants the poor little "supernumerary," and "joannes factotum"--actually lived to clamber astride of the most immortal birthright of bis own or of any century, and has clung thereon like another old man of the sea on sinbad's shoulders, and been carried down through these three hundred years, and is being carried yet, down or up, to an undeterminate immortality of fame that is the true estate of somebody else! for, not only has the world not yet gotten its eyes half open, but it contumaciously refuses, to open them to the facts in the case, and prefers to hug as tightly as it ever did this stupendous hoax--("_shakespearean_" indeed, in that it has outlasted and outlived all the other hoaxes put together--the witchcraft hoax, the chatterton hoax, the ossian hoax, the moon hoax, and all the rest of them); that has carried all sorts of parasite hoaxes, like ireland's, collier's, and cunningham's upon its back, until their little day has been accomplished, and they have dropped off, just as, one of these days, the present hoax must drop off, and breathe its last, without a single mourner to stand by the coffin, and confess himself its disciple. { } part iv. extra shakespearean theories: the delia bacon theory. [illustration: ] here is a legal maxim to the effect that he who destroys should be able to build up. the anti-shakespeareans have not neglected to observe it. the days when william shakespeare first appeared in london, happened to be the days when the renaissance had reached england, and the drama which began then for the first time to be produced, was the english renaissant drama--just throwing off the crudities of the old miracle and mystery plays borrowed from the continent, and beginning to be english and original. moreover, letters and learning, so long exclusively confined to the rich and gentle, began to find expressions in other ranks. "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease" were, one and all, beginning to use their pens. there were no village newspapers with their "poet's corners," and these writers sent their manuscripts through the only channel at hand--the green-room door. as these scores of manuscripts came in, william shakespeare, of stratford, now mr. manager shakespeare of the blackfriars, read them over; took out a scene here and an act there; scissored them as he pleased; made this "heavy" for the low comedian, and that for the "first old man;" adjusted the "love business," made "practical" for his boards all the { }nature and humor, and cut out all that came flat, stale, and unprofitable from the amateur's hand; even took a little of each to make a new one, if necessary, (thus retaining the indicia that _this_ was written by a lawyer, _that_ by a physician, _this_ by a soldier, _that_ by a chemist, etc., etc.). he did what dumas, boucicault and daly do to-day; he was, in other words, the stage editor, not the author, of the shakespearean drama; though, that it should be called by his name, is, perhaps, the least unusual thing about it. besides the gentlemen who used their pens, the very recent dissolution of the monasteries had thrown multitudes of "learned clerks," (the "clerical" profession then including lawyers and physicians, and indeed all book-learned men) upon their own resources for daily bread, and there was only one depot for their work. not three, but three thousand men there were, other things being equal, more competent by education at least, than william shakespeare to write the shakespearean drama. but other things, as we shall see, were not equal. it is suggested, on the one hand, that william shakespeare wrote the plays; on the other hand, that francis bacon wrote them; and, again, that sir walter raleigh wrote them. so far as mere dates go, any one of the three might have written them. they were all three in london, and on the ground when the plays appeared. the truth is perhaps somewhere among the three. francis bacon was the most learned man of his time. he could and did read greek in the original, and he did have access to untranslated manuscripts, such as the "menæclnni" of plautus. he was a philosopher, and he _did_ come nearer to a prescience of the philosophy of ages to be, than any man who { }ever lived--as witness his own acknowledged works. sir walter raleigh was a wit and a poet, a gentleman, a man of elegant nonchalance, a very mercutio, to the day of his execution. he was liberally educated, cultured, and would have been all this in a more cultivated day than his own; moreover, he was idle and a scribbler of belles-lettres. perhaps he killed time by writing speeches for the obsequious manager to put into plays for his stage. anonymous or pseudonymic authorship has ever been a penchant of the gentle and idle. shakespeare, let us say, was a shrewd man of business, who kept up with his times, as do managers of theaters to-day; he was quick to perceive where a point might be made in his plays, and moreover he employed--or perhaps was fortunate enough to secure by way of friendship--a poet to turn his ideas into speech for the mouths of his players. that he used his pen to prepare the prompter's manuscript of the pieces performed at his theater, we have already seen there is reason to believe. that he ever composed, on his own account, we have only a sort of innuendo of certain of his brother actors and playwrights, and a stratford tradition, which we can trace to no other source than the source of the belief outside--that is to say, to the fact that the plays were produced under his management in london. the innuendo dubs him a poet; the stratford tradition makes him to have written doggerel verses. but some have ventured to disbelieve both the innuendo and the tradition. still, writing his life, as we do, from imagination, it is much easier to imagine the three men--bacon, raleigh, and shakespeare--producing between them "hamlet," "othello," or the "comedy of errors," { }than to imagine william shakespeare alone doing it. especially since, apart from the internal evidence of the plays, he "had his hands full" of work besides--the work in which he earned his competency. it can not be too clearly borne in mind that shakespeare, in a space of ten or twelve years, actually made what is a fair fortune to-day. that bacon and raleigh, whose ambitions did not lead them to seek renown as playwrights, should have contributed their share to the plays--the first for gold which he needed, and the second for pastime which he craved--is not remarkable; we can see hundreds of young lawyers scribbling for gold while waiting for practice, or young "swells" trying their hand at comedies for the sport of the thing, by opening our eyes to-day. that the shrewd and successful manager should carefully pick into presentable and playable shape for his stage, these productions of his young friends, is, likewise, the easiest thing in the world to conceive of, or to see managers doing to-day. possibly, william shakespeare, or some other skilled playwright, took the dialogues--let us say, for example--of bacon and raleigh, put them into the form of plays, introduced a clown here or a jade there, interpolated saws and localisms, gave the characters their names, looked out for the "business," arranged the tableaux--in short, did what mr. wal-lack, or mr. daly, or mr. boucicault would have to do to-day to fit a play for the stage. it is thought that shakespeare himself did it, because the plays are said to have been seen in his handwriting, and because, from that fact or otherwise, they went by his name in the days when they were first produced in london. this sort of joint authorship would not only explain { }away the antagonism which grew up between the evidence of the man shakespeare and the evidence of the shakespearean plays, but account for the difficulties of accepting any anti-shakespearean theory. this would explain the parallel passages in bacon's writings and in the plays which judge holmes has so painstakingly sorted out; the little inaccuracies of law and of grammar, of geography and of history, in the plays themselves; mr. greene's "sea-coast of bohemia," or the introduction of gunpowder at the seige of troy--absurdities which it is morally impossible to suppose of the portrayer of antiquity who wrote "julius cæsar," or the knowledge that framed the historical plays. if, however, we consider them as the interpolations of a stage-wright * aiming at stage effect, they are easily enough accounted for. * it is nothing less than marvelous that this simple explanation should not have occurred to the wise men who have been knocking their heads against "the sea-coast of bohemia" for the last hundred years. that this error is a part of the "business" and not of the play, is very evident from a casual reading of act iii., scene iii. the stage direction for that scene is simply, "scene--a desert country near the sea," to be sure there is no stage direction of any sort in the "first folio" but we may be sure that this was the proper stage setting of the piece. and to fit it, antigonus, the first speaker, says to the mariner: "art thou perfect, then? our ship hath touched the deserts of bohemia." bobert green makes the same mistake in his "dorastus and faunia." it was, if any thing, a vulgar error of the time. there is no further allusion to the troublesome geography in the play. so, too, the gunpowder used at the seige of troy is a part of the "business," and should be assigned where it belongs--to the playwright and not to the dramatist. not only did the stage editor put it in, but he took it out of green's "dorastus and faunia." the stagewright saw an opportunity for the introduction of a stage ship or shipwreck, hence { }he puts in the borrowed "sea-coast." he needs an alarum of guns to impress his audience on the coming evening with the fact that a tight is in progress. and even if it should occur to him to doubt if there were any guns at the siege of ilium, he is pretty certain that it will not occur to the groundlings or the penny seats, from whose pocket all is grist that comes to his mill, if he makes the guns and the cannon a part of the "business." so, again, we have only to understand this, and the characters of hym and bardolph--supposed to have puzzled the critics since critics first began to busy themselves with these dramas--is explained. bardolph is the walking comedian, inserted by the experienced manager to tickle the frieti ciceris et nucis emptor, with his fiery nose, and corporal nym to break in with his "there's the humor of it," just as rip van winkle dwells upon his favorite toast, and solon shingle upon his ancestor who "fitted into the revolution." and to many minds this accounts for the little dashes of obscene display, the lewd innuendo, which came never from the same pen as the masterstrokes, but which they prefer to conceive of an actor or manager interpolating to the delight of monsieur taine's audience, and for the stolen delectation of the maids of honor and city dames who went, in men's clothes, to mingle with them. this, too, might account for the poems dedicated to southampton. in the lax court and reign of the virgin queen, there was at least one man bold and reckless enough to stand patron to the "venus and adonis" and "the rape of lucrece"--the noble young libertine of nineteen, southampton. similarly, there may have been but one man available upon { }whom to father them, and so the joint or several productions of certain young men about town, "curled darlings" who affected shakespeare's green-room, were sworn upon the complacent manager, who doubtless saw his profit in it. we have rumor, indeed, that his profit was no less a sum than one thousand pounds. but, as we have seen, and shall see further, this thousand pounds story is not only without authority, but incredible: that southampton's means did not justify him in giving away any such sum--that shakespeare did not need it, and that none of southampton's coterie ever heard of it. whether bacon wrote these works or not (and we may say the same of raleigh), and whether the audiences before whom these shakespearean dramas were first presented could have estimated them as what we of this age recognize them to be or not; we may be sure that, had he chanced to light upon them, lord bacon could have appraised them, and the genius that created them, at their true worth. but while lord bacon's writings teem with mention of his own contemporaries (mr. w. ii. smith points out the fact that we owe about all we know of raleigh's skill in repartee to bacon's "apothegms"), he nowhere alludes to such a man as william shakespeare!--to william shakespeare--who, if popular belief is true, was his lordship's most immortal contemporary, the one mind mightier than bacon's, and yet not a rival or a superior in his own particular sphere, of whom he could have been jealous. the truth which makes this strange riddle plain is, according to the baconian theory, that (to use sir tobie matthew's words in his famous letter to his patron) "the most { }prodigious wit that ever i knew, of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your lordship's name, though he be known by another," in other words, that bacon was "shakespeare." and, indeed, sir tobie was fonder of nothing than of indulging in sly allusions to lord bacon's secret, of which he had become possessed. in another letter than that just quoted, he says again to his lordship: "i will not promise to return you weight for weight, but _measure for measure_....and there is a certain judge in the world, who, in the midst of his popularity toward the meaner sort of men, would fain deprive the better sort of that happiness which was generally done in that time." * ** * holmes's "authorship of shakespeare," second edition, p. . ** "bacon and shakespeare," by w. h. smith, p. . such considerations as these, as they came one by one to light, began to suggest to thinking minds that perhaps william shakespeare was enjoying, by default, estates belonging to somebody else. but it is curious to see how gradually. in , theobald, a competent and painstaking scholar of the text, declares that there were "portions of the plays which proved beyond a doubt that more than one hand had produced them." more than fifty years after came dr. richard banner (who wrote his famous letter on "the learning of shakespeare," in or about ), and appears to have been the first actual anti-shakespearean and unbeliever. dr. farmer sought--by demonstrating that much of the learning of the plays could have been, by sufficient research, procured at second-hand--to account for (what he could not overlook) the utter inadequacy of the historical man to the immortal work { }assigned him; just as if it were not, if any thing, an increase (or say a substitution) of marvels to suppose a busy actor and manager rummaging england for forgotten manuscripts in the days when no public libraries existed, and when students lived in cloisters; or (let us say) that he knew precisely where to lay his hand on every obscure tract, letter, or memorandum ever drawn from a classical source! and just as if the encyclopaedic learning required was lessened by the fact that the plot of the perfected play was borrowed or rewritten from an older drama of the same name! for example of farmer's argument, take the following. in the play of that name, timon says:= ```"the sun's a thief, and with his great attention ```robs the vast sea. the moon's an arrant thief, ```and her pale fire she snatches from the sun. ```the sea's a thief whose liquid surge resolves ```the moon into salt tears. the earth's a thief ```that feeds and breeds by a composture stolen ```from general excrement: each thing's a thief."= now, exclaim the men who upho'd the stage manager's ability to read greek, the idea of this is from anacreon, and they give the ode in which william shakespeare found it. not so fast, says dr. farmer. he might have taken it from the french of ronsard, a french poet: because one puttenham, in his "arte of english poesie," published in , speaks of some one--of a "reasonable good facilitie in translation, who, finding certain of anacreon's odes very well translated by ronsard, the french poet--comes a minion and translates the same out of french into english," and "on looking into ronsard i find this very ode of anacreon among the rest!" { }letting pass the far-fetched conjecture which aims to prove that william shakespeare could not read greek by showing that he could reach french--or the observation, that the sum of dr. farmer's arguments (for the above is a sample of each and all of them) amounts simply to this, that: though the manager knew no greek--he knew where every thing contained in greek was to be obtained in translation: the question for us is simply, why should the stage-manager have recourse to either anacreon or ronsard for a meteorological episode? this, and a thousand like passages, are nothing but digressions, with nothing whatever to do with the action or by-play of the comedy or tragedy in which they occur, and not apposite to anything else in the part of the speakers who pronounced them. a scholar might be unable to keep them out; but why should a stage-manager--fitting a spectacle to the acting necessities of his boards or to the humor of his audience--put them in? whereas, if a scholar did write the manuscript play and sell it to a stage-manager, it is useless to ask why the stage-manager did not cut out the digression or why he left it in, for that was a mere matter of whim or circumstance, not worth our while to speculate over. dr. farmer went just far enough to see that, if the william shakespeare of history wrote the book, something must be done to account for his access to the material he wrought with. if the doctor had kept on a little further, the truth would have dawned upon him. but, as it was, he (without looking for them) observed traces of what he believed to be two hands in the plays, and so followed theobald. he says of hamlet, that he considered it "extremely probable that the french ribaldry in the { }last scene of hamlet was the work of another than the author of the body of the work"--but the hint was altogether lost on him. he looked no further, and so lived and died unsuspicious of the truth--namely, that it was only the fair-copied manuscript that was william shakespeare's. the "without blotting a line" of ben jonson--not a mere form of speech, but a fact, confirmed by heminges and condell, the editors of the "first folio" of , who say in their preface, "we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers"--as we shall see further on, ought to have itself awakened suspicion. lope de vega, the spaniard, who supplied his native stage with upward of two thousand original dramas--who is computed to have written upward of , , verses, and who wrote so hurriedly that he never had time to unravel his intrigues, but cut them all open "with a knife" in the last act--probably did write "without blotting a line." at least so mr. hallam thinks, adding that, "nature would have overstepped her bounds, and have produced the miraculous, had lope de vega, along with this rapidity and invention, attained perfection in any department of literature." * but in the case of these marvelous shakespeare plays, it was preferred to believe that nature _had_ "produced the marvelous," rather than accept the simple truth that what hem-inges and condell and ben jonson saw, were the engrossed parts written out for each actor, and not the first drafts of the poet, improvising as he wrote. * literature of europe, part ii., ch. vi., § . except that mr. spedding, in the "gentleman's magazine" for february, , printed a paper "who wrote { }shakespeare's henry viii?"--in which he claimed to have found startling traces of two hands in that play, (and possibly some other floating papers which have escaped our search)--prior to the year it had occurred to nobody (except kitty, in "high life below stairs") to ask the question, "who wrote shakespeare?" but, in august of that year an anonymous writer, in chambers' "edinburgh journal," distinctly and for the first time discussed the question, "who wrote shakespeare?"--when, after going overmuch of the ground we have already traversed, arrived, to his own "extreme dissatisfaction," (as he says, at the conclusion), that william shakespeare "kept a poet." it is curious to find this anonymous writer dealing, as airily as lady bab herself, with the question: and (while unconscious of the elaborate network of evidence he might have summoned, and suggesting no probable author by name) actually foreshadowing the laborious conviction which, four years later, delia bacon was to announce. he surmises, indeed, that william shakespeare was a sort of showman, whose interest in the immortal plays was a purchased interest--precisely what the law at present understands by "proprietary copyright." "the plays apparently arise... as the series goes on; all at once shakespeare, with a fortune, leaves london, and the supply ceases. is this compatible with a genius thus culminating, on any other supposition than the death of the poet and the survival of the employer?" of this supposititious hack-author, who dies, and leaves to william shakespeare the halo of his genius as well as the profit of his toil, this anonymous writer draws a picture { }that has something familiar in its coloring. "may not william shakespeare," he asks, "the cautious, calculating man, careless of fame, and intent only on money-making, have found, in some farthest garret over-looking the 'silent highway of the thames,' some pale, wasted student... who, with eyes of genius gleaming through despair, was about, like chatterton, to spend his last copper coin upon some cheap and speedy means of death? what was to hinder william shakespeare from reading, appreciating, and purchasing these dramas, and thereafter 'keeping his poet,' like mrs. packwood? with this view the disputed passages--those in which critics have agreed that the genius is found wanting--the meretricious ornaments sometimes crowded in--the occasional bad taste--in short, all the imperfections discernible and disputable in these mighty dramas, are reconcilable with their being the interpolations of shakespeare himself on his poet's works. * miss delia bacon, a remarkable lady, followed in a paper printed in "putnam's magazine," in its issue of january, , (and therefore must have written it in ), and was supposed therein to distinctly announce and maintain that lord bacon--her namesake by coincidence--was the "shakespeare" wanted--a supposition which, as we shall see, was erroneous. * chambers' "edinburgh journal,"'august , , p. . the audacity of the assertion, by a young woman, a school-teacher, in no way distinguished or anywise eminent, that the idol of these centuries, and of the english-speaking race, was a mere effigy of straw--a mere dummy for an unknown immortal, was too tremendous! men { }stood aghast. was it a chimera of a mind diseased! sneered at in her own country, she went to england, but found that--while at home she was treading only on adverse sentiment--_there_ she was openly tampering with vested rights, almost with the unwritten constitution of england. she made a few personal friends, and found some sympathizers, but all england was arrayed against her. she came back, heart-broken, and died eight months later. mr. william henry smith, of london, in september, , appeared with his "was lord bacon the author of shakespeare's plays? a letter to lord ellesmere," in which the baconian theory was very plainly and circumspectly laid down and admirably maintained. * the presumption once disturbed, inquiry began to be diverted from the well-worn track of the commentators, and the result has been, we think, a candid, rational, and patient attempt to study the shakespearean writings by the aid of contemporary history rather than by mere conjecture, and by the record rather than by fancy, guess-work, and gossip. * this "letter," which was reprinted in "littell's living age," (no. ), for november, , was, the following year ( ) elaborated into the valuable work on which we have so unsparingly drawn in these pages, and to which we acknowledge our exceeding obligation ("bacon and shakespeare: an inquiry touching players, playhouses, and play writers in the days of elizabeth. by william henry smith. london: smith, elder & co., "). in this work mr. smith (in his preface) asserts that at the date of his letter to lord ellesmere, he had never seen miss bacon's article in "putnam's," but, it is to be observed, no where claims to have been the originator of the "baconian theory." it is too early in the day--the time has been too short--for the reaction to have proved equal to the action, and verified the physical rule; but three well { }defined anti-stratfordian theories have offered themselves already, as substitutes for the mossy and venerable fossil remains of the commentators. these theories are: . the delia bacon theory; . the baconian theory; and . the new theory (as we are compelled, for want of a better name, to call it). the delia bacon theory. it was across no dethroned and shattered intellect that there first flashed the truth it has been the essay of these papers to rehearse. that delia bacon--who, earliest in point of time, announced to the world that "shakespeare" was the name of a _book_, and not the name of its author; and who, contenting herself with the bare announcement, soon passed on to the theory we are now about to notice--was pelted with a storm of derision, abuse, and merciless malice, until in poverty, sickness, and distress, but still in a grand silence, she passed out of sight for ever, is true enough. that in the midst of it all she still struggled on in what she believed to be "the world's work"--bearing more than it was ever intended a woman should bear--is not to overweigh any merit her scheme of the shakespearean plays may have possessed, however it may have eventuated in the "madness" so inseparably connected with her name. wherever delia bacon _died,_ she lived and moved in the conviction that she was a worker in the world's workshop. what to us is a mere cold, historical formulary, seems, however, we may smile at the absurdity, to have seized upon her whole life and being; and, as in a great crusade { }against a universal error, she seems to have struggled in loneliness and wretchedness, with a crusader's faith and a martyr's reward. in all her tragic life, delia bacon appears never to have paused to formulate the theory, for ever to be associated with her name, as to the actual authorship of the plays. the paper "william shakespeare and his plays," which appeared in "putnam's magazine" (and inaugurated the controversy, never thereafter to "down" at anybody's bidding), seems to treat the matter as already settled. it is rather sarcasm at the expense of those who rejected the theory of a non-shakespearean authorship than a formulation of the theory itself. that the sarcasm, as a sustained effort, has rarely if ever been equaled, there certainly can be no question. her indignation at the idea that the magnificent plays sprang from the brain of "the stratford poacher--now that the deer-stealing fire has gone out of him; now that this youthful impulse has been taught its conventional mental limits, sobered into the mild, sagacious, witty mr. shakespeare of the globe," is intense. "what is to hinder mr. shakespeare, the man who keeps the theater on the bank-side, from working himself into a frenzy when he likes, and scribbling out, unconsciously, lears, and macbeths and hamlets, merely as the necessary dialogues to the spectacle he professionally exhibits!" her allusion to bacon is equally impassioned: "we should have found, ere this, _one_ with learning broad enough and deep enough and subtle enough and comprehensive enough; one with nobility of aim and philosophic and poetic genius enough to be able to claim his own, his own immortal progeny, unwarped, un{ }blinded, undeprived of one ray or dimple of that all-pervading reason that informs them--one who is able to reclaim them, even now, 'cured and perfected in their limbs, and absolute in full numbers as he conceived them!'" long before its appearance, as we shall proceed to narrate; and still longer before the world had well opened its eyes to the fact that a formidable anti-shakespearean proposition had been asserted, its author had left the proposition itself leagues behind, and was well along on her route to the fountain-head of its inspiration. the problem she proposed to herself was not, "did bacon and others write the plays?" but "why did bacon and others write the plays under the name of william shakespeare?" as the fruit of laborious study of the system and structure of the plays, she reached the answer--as she believed, and lived and died believing--hidden and embalmed in the masterpiece of them all, the tragedy of "hamlet." "hamlet," she maintained, was the master-key that unlocked the whole magnificent system. they were not plays, but chapters in a great treatise--links in a great chain of philosophy--a new philosophy of politics and of life; and, just as the lord hamlet caused certain strolling players, with the set speech he put into their mouths, to "catch the conscience of the king," so had the greatest mind of all the golden age put into the mouths of the vagabond shakespeare and his crew the truth which should, in the fullness of time, catch the conscience of the whole world. but why should these great minds have chosen to put their philosophy into enigmas and ciphers? miss bacon's answer was convincing: "it was the time when the cipher, in which one could { }write 'omnia per omnia,' was in request; when even 'wheel ciphers' and 'doubles' were thought not unworthy of philosophic notice. it was a time, too, when the phonographic art was cultivated and put to other uses than at present, and when a nomme de plume was required for other purposes than to serve as the refuge of an author's modesty, or vanity, or caprice. it was a time when puns, and charades, and enigmas, and anagrams, and monograms, and ciphers, and puzzles were not mere sport and child's play; when they had need to be close and solvable only to those _who should_ solve them. it was a time when all the latent capacities of the english language were put in requisition, and it was flashing and crackling through all its length and breadth, with puns and quips and conceits and jokes and satires, and inlined with philosophic secrets that opened down into the bottom of a tomb, that opened into the tower, that opened on the scaffold and the block." * this was the "delia bacon theory." this was the "madness" forever associated with her plaintive story, and _not_ the proposition that the author of the plays (whoever he might be--or they, if more than one) and william shakespeare were persons--as distinctly two as were the noble hamlet and the poor player who played "gonzago" in the "mousetrap" that day before the majesty of denmark. but, madness or not, miss bacon never wavered in her conviction that the appointed time to read the oracles had come, and that _she_, delia bacon, a namesake, possibly, of the real hamlet of the plays, had been raised in her appointed place to be the reader. alas for her! * "philosophy of shakespeare's plays unfolded," p. x. { }like cassandra, she announced her message only to be scorned and flouted in return! by what whim of fortune or fancy the great plays had grown to be known as "shakespeare's works," any more than burbage's works, or jonson's works, she never troubled herself to inquire; but with the details of lier mission she was careful to possess herself. she held that "the material evidence of her dogma as to the authorship, together with the key of the new philosophy, would be found buried in shakespeare's grave." * she claims to have discovered, by careful study of lord bacon's letters, not only the key and clew to the whole mystery, but to an entire baconian cipher in these letters--there were over five hundred of them extant, and others have been discovered, we believe, since miss bacon's day--however, it still remains, for the secret of miss bacon's clew died with her. but she stoutly maintained that in these letters were "definite and minute directions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of elizabethan philosophers, which were concealed in a hollow space in the under surface of shakespeare's gravestone.... the directions, she intimated, were completely and precisely to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way of coming to the treasure, and so contrived as to ward off any troublesome consequences likely to arise from the interference of the parish officers.... there was the precious secret protected by a curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend." ** * hawthorne. ** id. delia bacon was born in new haven, in , and early devoted herself to literature, writing two works "the tales of the puritans" and "the bride of fort edward." she soon, however, abandoned miscellaneous writing and adopted the profession of a student and teacher of history, and began her career as a lecturer on history in the city of boston. her method was original with herself. she had models, charts, maps, and pictures to illustrate her subject; and we are told by mrs. farrar ("recollections of seventy years," boston, ticknor & fields, ) that, being of a commanding presence and elegant delivery, she was successful and attracted large audiences. mrs. farrar says, "she looked like one of dante's sibyls, and spoke like. ** id. delia bacon was born in new haven, in , and early devoted herself to literature, writing two works "the tales of the puritans" and "the bride of fort edward." she soon, however, abandoned miscellaneous writing and adopted the profession of a student and teacher of history, and began her career as a lecturer on history in the city of boston. her method was original with herself. she had models, charts, maps, and pictures to illustrate her subject; and we are told by mrs. farrar ("recollections of seventy years," boston, ticknor & fields, ) that, being of a commanding presence and elegant delivery, she was successful and attracted large audiences. mrs. farrar says, "she looked like one of dante's sibyls, and spoke like an angel." the original manu{ }scripts of the plays she did not expect to find there. these she believed the ignorant shakespeare to have scattered, after the blotless copies for the players had been taken; to have devoted to domestic purposes, or to have never concerned himself about farther. this was the gravamen of the charge she brought against "lord leicester's groom," the co-manager, late of stratford, and this the vandalism for which she never could forgive him. "this fellow," she cried, "never cared a farthing for them, but only for his gains at their hands.... what is to hinder his boiling his kettle with the manuscripts... after he had done with them? he had those manuscripts--the original hamlet, with its last finish;... the original lear, with his own fine readings... he had them all--pointed, emphasized, corrected, as they came from the gods! and he has left us to wear out our youth and squander our life in poring over and setting right the old garbled copies of the play-house!... for is he not a private, economical, practical man, this shakespeare of ours, with no stuff and nonsense about him; a plain, true-blooded englishman, who minds his own { }business, and leaves others to take care of theirs?... what did he do with them? he gave them to his cook, or dr. hall put up potions in them, or judith--poor judith, who signified her relation to the author of lear and the tempest, and her right to the glory of the name he left her, by the very extraordinary kind of 'mark' which she affixed to legal instruments--poor judith may have curled her hair with them to the day of her death.... what did you do with them? you have skulked this question long enough; you will have to account for them! the awakening ages will put you on the stand, and you will not leave it until you answer the question, what did you do with them?" * this chain of dramas, so blindly perpetuated by william shakespeare, became, through miss bacon's unlocking process, a great system of political philosophy, dictated by the thoughtful bacon and his compeers, and locked up for the nineteenth century, against the blindness of the centuries between. but, of so startling a proposition, miss bacon confesses that the world would require something more than her own conviction. so she deliberately set out to _prove_, from the very crypt and silence of the grave itself, its truth. to st. albans, whence the mysterious letters were dated, to the lonesome tomb at old verulam and the vault in stratford chancel, she proposed a pilgrimage--thence to probe the secret, and lay it open to a doubting world. her friends regarded her theory as a delusion, and miss bacon as a monomaniac.... * "putnam's magazine," january, . { } "to her conversations on the subject, and peremptorily refused contributions to assist in her expedition. but, by her lectures, and the friend she enlisted in her project in new york city, she gathered together enough money to get to london." it was while in london, in abject poverty and friendlessness, that thomas carlyle, "upon whom she had called and whom she had impressed with respect for herself if not for her theory," says hawthorne, advised miss bacon to put her thoughts upon paper first, before proceeding to the overt act of proof she contemplated--namely, the opening of william shakespeare's grave. it was upon his advice that this most remarkable woman--sitting in bed in a garret to keep warm without a fire, without sufficient or wholesome food, "looking back," to use her own words, "on the joys and sorrows of a world in which i have no longer any place, like a departed spirit," and yet, doing "the world's work," and knowing "that i had a right to demand aid for it"--undertook to unfold out of the shakespearean plays their hidden system of philosophy." meanwhile, under a contract obtained for her by mr. p. w. emerson (though, it is presumed, more for temporary supply of funds than as rider to her great work), she furnished to "putnam's magazine" eighty pages of manuscript, which became the famous paper "william shakespeare and his plays," first announcing to the world the first anti-shakespearean theory of which it had ever heard. ** * mrs. farrar. ** this was contracted to be the first of a series of papers, but the arrangement for some reason, probably because miss bacon found it necessary to devote herself to the work to which she was to give her life, fell through, and no successive papers appeared in the magazine. they put their shakespeares out of sight when she approached, declined to listen{ }under such circumstances, and with such surroundings, this heroic woman accomplished the first half of the work she had marked out for herself--the reading of the sealed book, the unfolding of the philosophy of the shakespearean plays. her book was written, printed, published, and--damned! * * "the philosophy of shakespeare's plays unfolded. by delia bacon." london: sampson, low & co.; and boston: ticknor & fields, . the book lies before us, and certainly is the most difficult reading we ever attempted. even so competent and partial a critic as hawthorne says of it: "without prejudice to her literary ability, it must be allowed that miss bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. every leaf and line was sacred, for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth, as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. a practiced book-maker, with entire control of her material, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume, full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation--criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remarks on shakespeare.... there was a great amount of rubbish, which any competent editor would have shoveled out of the way. but miss bacon thrust the whole bulk of inspiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and there tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public, and has never been picked up. a few persons turned over one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the volume deeper into the mud.... i believe that it has been the faith of this remarkable book never to have had more than a single reader. i myself am acquainted with it only in isolated chapters and scattered pages and paragraphs. but since my return to america, a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doctrines. it belongs to him, therefore, and not to me, whom, in almost the last letter that i received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle with her work--it belongs surely to this one individual, who has done her so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place miss bacon in her due position before the public." ("our old home.") the volume is obtained to-day, only by chance, in old bookshops and at such prices as the bookseller may choose to demand. it failed so utterly { }and miserably that nobody opened it, though that fact deterred nobody, of course, from laughing at it and its author to the utmost of their endeavor in ridicule and abuse. "our american journalists," says hawthorne, "at once republished some of the most brutal vituperations of the english press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved, and they never have known it to this day, and never will." but none the less did delia bacon persevere to the end. the philosophy was unfolded. if the world declined to receive the truth--"the truth," as she claimed, "that is neither yours nor mine, but yours _and_ mine"--it was not on her head, at least, that the consequences would fall. the second half of her work remained. she proceeded to stratford to crown her labors, by opening the vault in the chancel of the parish church, and exposing the secret she had already guessed, to the doubting thomasses who clamored for the tactual evidence so long entombed there. although on a mission so likely to be regarded as predatory--as even coming under police prohibition, miss bacon seems to have lived in open avowal of her purpose, under the very shadows of the church she meant to despoil, and to have made nothing but friends. the regard was mutual, and, says hawthorne, { }"she loved the slumberous town, and awarded the only praise that i ever knew her to bestow on shakespeare, the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in selecting a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suitable retirement for a person of shy but genial temperament." she laid her plans before the vicar, who, so far as miss bacon ever was permitted to learn, never opposed them. * at least he did not hand her over to the first dogberry at hand--a most un-english omission on his part. he did, however, ask miss bacon's leave to consult a friend, "who proved to be legal counsel," and who, doubtless, advised inaction, for the matter was allowed, so far as the lady was concerned, to retain the form of a pending negotiation with the parish, never, as a matter of fact, broken off on its part. the rest is best told in mr. hawthorne's dramatic narrative: "the affair looked certainly very hopeful. however erroneously, miss bacon had understood from the vicar that no obstacle would be interposed to the investigation, and that he himself would sanction it with his presence. it was to take place after nightfall; and, all preliminary arrangements being made, the vicar and the clerk professed to wait only her word, in order to set about lifting the awful stone from its sepulchre... * i cannot help fancying, however, that her familiarity with the events of shakespeare's life, and of his death and burial (of which she would speak as if she had been present at the the edge of the grave), and all the history, literature, and personalities of the elizabethan age, together with the prevailing power of her own belief, had really gone some little way toward making a convert of the good clergyman.--hawthorne. she examined the surface of the gravestone, and en{ }deavored, without stirring it, to estimate whether it were of such thickness as to be capable of containing the archives of the elizabethan club. she went over anew the proofs, the clews, the enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in bacon's letters and elsewhere.... she continued to hover around the church, and seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day-time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a late hour at night. she went thither with a dark lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm through the volume of obscurity that filled the great, dusky edifice. groping her way up the aisle, and toward the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of the pavement above shakespeare's grave. she made no attempt to disturb the grave, though, i believe, she looked narrowly into the crevices between shakespeare's and the two adjacent stones, and in some way satisfied herself that her single strength would suffice to lift the former, in case of need. she threw the feeble rays of her lantern up toward the bust, but could not make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted roof.... several times she heard a low movement in the aisle; a stealthy, dubious footfall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, as if some restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep at the intruder. by and by the clerk made his appearance, and confessed that he had been watching her ever since she entered the church. this was the nearest she came to the overt act, all thought of which was finally abandoned; for, meanwhile, worn out with the absorbing mental activity of these last years, and her physical privations (she had only ar{ }rived in stratford in a condition so feeble and prostrated as to have believed herself beyond any necessity of providing any further earthly sustenance; the failure of her book and the miscarriage of her plans did the rest), she finally consented to be borne back to her home to die peacefully at the last, among friends. her life and her "theory" are only to be discussed together, and both with tenderness. "was there ever a more wonderful phenomenon?" exclaims hawthorne--"a system of philosophy, growing up in this woman's mind, without her volition, contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her volition, and substituting itself in the place of everything that originally grew there! to have based such a system on fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in the plays... it certainly came from no inconsiderable depth somewhere." this was, so far as she herself put it on paper, miss delia bacon's theory. it is to be carefully noticed, however, that it is a theory, not of a unitary but of a joint authorship. there is one passage in the "putnam's magazine" article (which at that time was announced by the publishers as the first of a series of papers, and was so intended by miss bacon) which points to bacon as the supposed sole author of the plays. but, in the book which followed it, these plays are repeatedly assigned to a conclave or junta of elizabethan courtiers and scholars, and such was the faith, we believe, in which miss bacon labored and died. the unitary theory, we believe not unfairly, may be assigned to messrs. smith and holmes; the latter of whom, in the preface to his work, most distinctly { }rejects miss bacon's "junta" authorship, and undertakes to maintain the proposition that bacon, and bacon alone, was the author of the whole canon of "shakespeare." according to judge holmes, bacon had reasons in plenty for concealing his authorship, and for "loving better to be a poet than to be accounted one." not only his personal safety:--dr. heywood was already in the tower for having incensed the queen by an unlucky pamphlet dedicated to essex; and "not long after this," says holmes, "and while essex is under arrest, and bacon in sundry interviews with the queen, is still interceding in his behalf, her majesty brings up against him this affair of dr. hoywood's book, and also, as it would seem, distinctly flings at bacon himself about 'a matter which grew from him, but went after about in other's names (in fact no other than the play richard ii. we have to-day)." but the development of his plans made concealment particularly desirable. political rivals were watching jealously his every utterance. he is known to be a "concealed poet," so he prepares a masque or two for the queen's own eye and audience; but he alone, according to judge holmes, writes "shakespeare." "had the plays (says mr. furness) come down to us anonymously--had the labor of discovering the author been imposed upon future generations, we could have found no one of that day but francis bacon to whom to assign the crown. in this case it would have been resting now upon his head by almost common consent." it is well that this essential difference between the "delia bacon" and the "baconian" theories should be emphasized here. { } part v. the baconian theory. [illustration: ] he english renaissance drama seems naturally to group itself into two grand divisions: the elizabethan drama and--shakespeare. there is nothing in the first which surprises: which impresses us as too abrupt a departure from the brutish coarseness and grossness of the middle age mummeries--"miracle plays" and "mysteries"--or as being too refined or elaborate for the groundlings who swaggered and swilled beer, or the lords and maids of honor who ogled and flirted in the contemporary barns called "play-houses" in the days of elizabeth. but that the proprietor of one of these barns should have found it to his profit to have overshot the intelligence of his audience by creating a hamlet, a lear, brutus, and macbeth--the action of whose roles are intellectual rather than scenic--for his players, or an ophelia, isabella, or catharine for the small boys employed to render his female parts, is an incongruity--to put it mildly--which arrests our credulity at once. the utmost that the shakespeareans propose to do--the utmost they attempt--is to make out william shakespeare to have been an elizabethan dramatist. but the elizabethan dramatist was a man who catered to the elizabethan play-goer. greene, peele, lodge, nash, and the rest, were elizabethan dramatists. but { }their names are only a catalogue to-day. if we happen to buy a set of their works at a bargain, at some old book sale, we may put them on our shelves; but we are not equal to the laborious task of reading them. the shakespearean drama is a thing apart. its dramatic form seems only an incident; perfect as that incident is, there is so much more in it that we find appealing to our hearts and intellects to-day, that we hesitate to ascribe it even to an elizabethan dramatist. the baconian theory, as elaborated by holmes, we understand to be that this element apart from the dramatic, in these days is the key-note and explanation of the whole shakespeare mystery, and leads to the discovery that "shakespeare" was only a convenient name under which the popular ear was sought to be arrested by a philosopher, who wrote in cipher, as it were, for a great purpose of his own. the philosophical system contemplated by francis bacon--say the baconians--was divided into two grand divisions, the didactic and the historical. the first--its author (despairing of contemporary fame, or possibly distrustful of the permanence of the vernacular) locked up in the universal language of scholars, and left it by his testament to "the next ages." the other he chose to put into dramatic form. the spirit, motive, theme, and purport of two great phenomena of english letters, synchronizing in date (the philosophical canon of bacon and the dramatic canon of "shakespeare,") are identical, and form together essentially one great body of philosophy and inductive science, and, therefore, must have had the one author. "it is a thing, indeed, if practiced professionally, of low repute; but if it be made a part of discipline, it { }is of excellent use--i mean stage playing." he says himself. and again: "dramatic poetry is as history made visible." this historical or preliminary division of the philosophy did not need a dead, but a living language--the language of his race. this he left in english: and when, at the end, a broken, weak, despised old man--knowing himself only too well to be the meanest and weakest of his kind; but yet conscious of having, in a large sense, worked for the good of his fellow-men--he made no excuse or palliation, but only bespoke for himself and his life "men's charitable speeches." but, if there was but one author for these two contemporary works, why not william shakespeare as well as francis bacon? why not ask the question, "did william shakespeare write lord bacon's works?" * as well as, "did lord bacon write william shakespeare's work?" while not within our scope to demonstrate the identical philosophy of the novum organum and the shakespearean drama--(a work to which miss bacon devoted her life--and whose demonstration has been followed by judge holmes)--it is property within that scope to examine, from the outside, the question whether, as matter of fact, william shakespeare could have written either; or whether, from circumstantial evidence merely, lord bacon was thus, and in pursuance of a great purpose, actually the author of the dramatic canon of "shakespeare." * see this question asked and answered affirmatively in "north american review." february, . new york. d. appleton & co. how, aside from any _opinion_ as to their value, beauty, or eloquence, there are two characteristics of { }the shakespearean works which, under the calmest and most sternly judicial treatment to which they could possibly be subjected, are so prominent as to be beyond gainsay or neglect. these two characteristics are-- . the encyclopaedic universality of their information as to matters of fact; and, . the scholarly refinement of the style displayed in them. their claim to eloquence and beauty of expression, after all, is a question of taste; and we may conceive of whole peoples--as, for example, the zulus or the ashantees--impervious to any admiration for the shakesperean plays on that account. but this familiarity with what, at their date, was the past of history, and--up to that date--the closed book of past human discovery and research which we call learning; is an open and indisputable fact; and the new-zealander who shall sit on a broken arch of london bridge and muse over the ruins of british civilization, if he carry his researches back to the shakespearean literature, will be obliged to find that its writer was in perfect possession of the scholarship antecedent to his own date, and of the accumulated learning of the world down to his own actual day. moreover, this scholar would not be compelled to this decision only by a careful examination of the entire shakespearean opera. he will be forced to so conclude on an examination of any one, or, at the most, of any given group of single plays. let him open at random, and fall upon, let us say, the "julius cæsar." * * see in this connection "the english of shakespeare illustrated in a philological commentary on his 'julius cæsar.' by g. l. craik." london. chapman & hall. . even the artificial alexander pope (who, so far from being an over-estimator of the shakes{ }pearean works, only, from the heights of his superior plane, admits them very grudgingly to a rank beside the works of waller) was obliged to confess as much. "this shakespeare," says mr. pope, "must have been very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity. in 'coriolanus' and 'julius cæsar,' not only the spirit, but the manner of the romans is exactly drawn; and still a nicer distinction is shown between the manners of the romans in the time of the former and of the latter. no one is more a master of the poetical story, or has more frequent allusions to the various parts of it. mr. waller (who has been celebrated for this last particular) has not shown more learning in this way than shakespeare," * but, if the new-zealander be a philologist, he will scarcely need perusal of more than a shakespearean page to arrive at this judgment. wherever else the verdict of scholarship may err, the microscope of the philologist cannot err. like the skill of the chirographical expert, it is infallible, because, just as the hand of a writer, however cramped, affected, or disguised, will unconsciously make its native character of curve or inclination, so the speech of a man will be molded by his familiarity, be it greater or less, with the studies, learning, tastes, and conceits of his own day, and by the models before him. he cannot unconsciously follow models that are unknown to him, or speak in a language he has never learned. * smith, p. . { } corroboration of history, that they were only the forgeries of a precocious boy. to just as moral a certainty are the handiwork of the elohist and the jehovist discernible in the hebrew scriptures, and just as absolutely incapable of an alternative explanation are the ear-marks of the shakespearean text. hallam, whose eyes were never opened to the truth, and who lived and died innocent of any anti-shakespearean theory (though he sighed for a "shakespeare of heaven," turning in disgust from the "shakespeare of earth," of whom only he could read in history), noticing the phases, unintelligible and improper except in the sense of their primitive roots, which occur so copiously in the plays, proceeds to say: "in the 'midsummer-night's dream' these are much less frequent than in his later dramas; but here we find several instances. thus, 'things base and vile, holding no _quantity_' (for _value_) rivers that 'have overborne their _continents_' (the _continenti riva_ of-horace); '_compact_ of imagination;' 'something of great _constancy_' (for _consistency_); 'sweet pyramus _translated_ there;' 'the law of athens, which by no means we may _extenuate_,' etc. i have considerable doubts," continues mr. hallam, "whether any of these expressions would be found in the contemporary prose of elizabeth's reign, which was less overrun with pedantry than that of her successor. could authority be produced for latinisms so forced, it is still not very likely that one who did not understand their proper meaning would have introduced them into poetry." * * "literature of europe," part ii, ch. vi, sec. . "to be told that he played a trick to a brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died in a drunken frolic.. does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote "lear." if there was a shakespeare of earth, as i suspect, there was also one of heaven, and it is of him that we desire to know something." id. part ii, ch. vi, sec. , note. young chatterton deceived the most profound scholars of his day, and his manuscripts stood every test but this; but under it they revealed the fact, so soon to receive the mournful { }social speech in those days, even in the highest walks of life--we happen to have very graphic accounts of queen elizabeth's sayings and retorts courteous (as, e. g., when she boxed essex's ears and told him to go and be hanged)--it requires considerable credulity to assign this classic diction to a rustic apprentice from stratford, who, at "about eighteen," begins his dramatic labors, fresh from the shambles, and with no hiatus for a college course between. add to this the patent fact that the antique allusions in the plays "have not regard to what we may call 'school classics,' but to authors seldom perused but by profound scholars" * even to-day: and technical exploration, however far it proceeds beyond this in the shakespearean text, can bring evidence only cumulative as to the result already obtained. but, if we pass from the technical structure to the material of the plays, we are confronted with the still more amazing discovery that, not only the lore of the past was at the service of their author, but that he had no less an access to secrets supposed to be locked in the very womb of time, the discoveries of which, in the as yet distant future, were to immortalize their first _sponsors_. * smith, p. . ** though not, perhaps, universally now-a-days. the late john elliotson declared that the circulation through the lungs had certainly been taught seventy years previously by servetus, who was burned at the stake in . dr. robert willis asserts, in his "life of harvey," that the facts he used were familiarly known to most of his predecessors for a century previous. izaak walton states that harvey got the idea of circulation from walter warner, the mathematician; and that eminent physician, john hunter, remarks that servetus first, and realdus columbus afterward, clearly announced the circulation of the blood through the lungs; and cisalpinus, many years before harvey, published, in three different works, all that was wanting in servetus to make the circulation complete. wotton says that servetus was the first, as far as he could learn, who had a distinct idea of this matter. even the chinese were impressed with this truth some four thousand years before europeans dreamed of it. plato affirmed--"the heart being the knot of the veins, and the fountain from whence the blood arises and briskly circulates through all the members." this, however, rather adds to than lessens the strength of the argument drawn from finding the "discovery" in the plays. for example, dr. harvey does not announce--what is credited to him *--his discovery of the circulation of { }the blood in the human system--until (his book was not published until ), three years after william shakespeare's death. but why need dr. harvey have resorted to vivisection to make his "discovery"? he need only have taken down his "shakespeare." is there any thing in dr. harvey any more exactly definite than the following?= ```"i send it through the rivers of your blood, ```even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain, ```and, through the cranks and offices of man: ```the strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, ```from me receive that natural competency ```whereby they live." `````-- _coriolanus, act i, scene _.= ```"... had baked thy blood, and made it heavy-thick ```(which, else, runs tickling up and down the veins"). --_king john, act iii, scene ._= { } ```... as dear to me as are tlie ruddy drops ```that visit my sad heart." --_julius caesar, act it, scene ._= harvey's discovery, however, is said to have been the theory of galen, paracelsus, and hippocrates (who substituted the _liter_ for the _heart_), and to have been held also by rabelais. neither galen, paracelsus, hippocrates, nor rabelais was a text-book at stratford grammar-school during the two terms mr. de quincy placed william shakespeare as a pupil there--but william has them at his fingers' ends. there are said to be no less than seventy-eight passages in the plays wherein this fact of the circulation of the blood is distinctly alluded to; and, as to galen and paracelsus, they intrude themselves unrestrictedly all through the plays, without the slightest pretext or excuse:= ```"_parolles_. so i say; both of galen and paracelsus. ```_lafeu_. of all the learned and authentic fellows." ````--_all's well that ends well, act ii, scene ._= ```"_host of the garter inn_. what says my Æsculapius? my galen?" ````--merry wives of windsor, act ii., scene .= in king henry vi. part ii., act ii, scene , the erudite bardolph and falstaff's classical page make a learned blunder about althea, whom the page confounds with hecuba. and so on. are we to believe that this sometime butcher's boy and later stage manager has his head so brimming full of his old greeks and philosophers that he can not for a moment miss their company, and makes his very panders and public-cans prate of them? even if it were the commonest { }thing in the world, nowadays, in , for our mr. boucicault or mr. daly to write a play expressly to catch the taste of the canaille of the old bowery (or, for that matter, of the urbane and critical audiences of wallack's or the union square), and stuff all the low-comedy parts with recondite and classical allusion (for this is precisely what william shakespeare is said to have done for the unroofed play-house in the mud of the bankside in london, some three hundred years ago or less, and to have coined a fortune at)--even, we say, if it were the simplest thing in the world to imagine this sort of play writing to-day, would it be a wilder flight of fancy to suggest a pale student in london in the days of queen elizabeth, somewhere among the garrets of gray's inn, writing dialogues into which galen and paracelsus would intrude unbidden--and a stage manager letting them stay there as doing no harm (or, may be, taking them for names, of dogs or wenches--at any rate, as good, mouth-filling words, to be paid for at the lowest market price): * than to conceive a twelfth manager and proprietor of this home of the muses, and whilom sticker of calves, after the day's labor, shunning his cups and the ribald mirth-making of those sad dogs, his fellow { }managers, to seek, in the solitude of his library and greek manuscripts, the choice companionship of this same galen and paracelsus? * shakespeare married a woman older than himself. why-should he call attention to the fact, publish it to the rabble, or record it on his stage whenever he found opportunity? see midsummer-night's dream," act i, scene --"o, spite, too old to be engaged to young!" etc. again--"too old, by heaven! let still the woman take an elder than herself." again--"then let thy love be younger than thyself," etc., etc. ("twelfth night," act ii., scene .) it is very difficult to suppose that shakespeare should have wantonly in public insulted his own wife (however he might snub her in private); though it is very easy to imagine his passing it over in another man's manuscript in hurried perusal in the green-room."--chambers's journal, august , ,p. . newton, who was only born in --twenty years after shakespeare was laid away in his tomb--surely need not have lain under his appletree in the orchard at woolsthorpe, waiting for the falling fruit to reveal the immutable truth of gravitation. he had but to take down his copy of "troilus and cressida" (printed in ) to open to the law itself, as literally stated as he himself could have formulated it:= ```"_cressida._... but the strong base and building of my love ```is as the very center of the earth, ```drawing all things to it." ````--_troilus and cressida, act iv., scene ._= are we called upon to tax our common sense to fancy our manager, on one of his evenings at home, after the play at the globe was over, snugly in his library, out of hearing of the ribaldry of his fellows over their cups, stumbling upon the laws of the circulation of the blood and of gravitation, engrossing them "without blotting out a line," and sending the "copy" to the actors so that they could commit it to memory for the stage on the following evening? what a library it was--that library up among the flies (if they had such things) of the old globe theater! what an elihu burritt its owner must have been, to have snatched from his overworked life--from the interval between the night's performance and the { }morning's routine--the hours to labor over galen and paracelsus and plato in the original greek! it was miracle enough that the learned blacksmith at his forge, in the nineteenth century--surrounded with libraries, and when books could be had for the purchasing--could have mastered all the known languages. but that william shakespeare, with only two terms at stratford school, (or, let us say, twenty years at stratford school, or at the university of oxford--for there is as much evidence that he was at oxford as that he was at stratford school) _without_ books, since there were no books purchasable, should have known every thing that was written in books! surely there never was such a miracle as this! "he was the prophet of geology," says fullom, "before it found an exponent in werner;" ```"o heaven! that one might read the book of fate; ```and see the revolution of the times ```make mountains level, and the continent ```(weary of solid firmness) melt itself ```into the sea! and, other times, to see ```the beechy girdle of the ocean ```too wide for neptune's hips." ** and yet william shakespeare had but two terms of hunt, jenkins and stratford school! and, mr. malone believed, had never even gone so far into the classics as to have read tacitus! *** * "history of william shakespeare, player and poet, with new facts and traditions." by w. s. fullom, london: saunders, otley & co., brook street, . ** "king henry iv.," part ii., act , scene i. *** see ante, p. . what was, or was not, taught at this marvelous { }stratford school, "two terms," of which--between his poaching and his beer-bouting--were all the schooling william shakespeare ever had, according to all bis biographies. (we say, all he ever had, because his father was so illiterate that he signed every thing with a mark, and so did his mother, and so did the rest of william's family; and the boy william was too busy at skylarking--according to those who knew him--to have had much opportunity of private instruction at the parental knee, even had the parental acquirements been adequate.) were the theory and practice of the common law taught there? "legal phrases flow from his pen," says mr. grant white, "as a part of his vocabulary and parcel of his thought.... this conveyancer's jargon ('fine and recovery,' 'tenure,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' etc., etc.) could not have been picked up by hanging around the courts in london, two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were comparatively rare. and, besides, shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his early plays, written in his first loudon years, as in those produced at a later period." * and not only in the technique, but in the groundwork of that mighty and abstruse science, the law of england," is he perfect. a chief justice of england has declared that "while novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the law of marriage, of wills, and of inheritance, to shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounded it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." ** * memoir," p. . and see "was shakespeare a lawyer?" by h. t-------. london: longmans, green, reader a dyer, . ** "shakespeare's legal acquirements," lord campbell, p. . and see "shakespeare a lawyer," by w. l. rushton. london, . were medicine and { }surgery taught there? dr. bucknill * asserted in that it has been possible to compare shakespeare's knowledge with the most advanced knowledge of the present day. and not only in the general knowledge of a lawyer and a physician, but in what we call in these days "medical jurisprudence," the man that wrote the historical play of henry iv. seems to have been an expert. mr. david paul brown ** says that in "frost's case" (a cause celebre of his day), on a trial for murder, the defense set up that the deceased had committed suicide. a celebrated physician being on the stand as an expert on this question, was examined as follows: q. what are the general indications of death from violence? a. my knowledge will not enable me to answer so broad a question. and yet mr. brown points out that "william shakespeare's knowledge had enabled him" to answer so "broad a question:"= ```"_warwick_. see how the blood is settled in his face! ```oft have i seen a timely parted ghost ```of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless. **** ```but see, his face is black and full of blood; ```his eyeballs further out than when he lived, ```staring full ghastly, like a strangled man; ```his hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling;= * "medical knowledge of shakespeare." j. c. bucknill, m. d. london, . and see appendix i. ** the forum. by david paul brown. philadelphia, . { } ```his hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped ```and tugged for life, and was by strength subdued. **** ```it can not be but he was murdered here; ```the least of all these signs were probable." * = all the arts, sciences, and literatures must have been mastered by our sleepless shakespeare, either at stratford school, or in the midst of his london career, when operating two theaters, reading plays for his stage, editing them, engrossing the parts for his actors, and acting himself. (and mr. cohn will have it that in these unaccounted-for times, he had visited germany with his troupe and performed in all its principal cities, coining money as he went.) ** mr. brown, dr. bell, and others, announce that they believe that these travels of his extended to italy, and mr. thoms and mr. cohn, to some extent, account for shakespeare on the continent, by believing that, instead of going at once to london, when fleeing from stratford before sir thomas lucy, he enlisted under leicester for the netherlands in , but left the ranks for the more lucrative career of an actor. but these theories only crowd still more thickly the brief years in which the great works (which are, after all, what the world regards in these investigations), appeared. * henry vi., act , scene ii. ** "shakespeare in germany. by albert cohn. london and berlin: asher &co., . and see shakespeare's autographical poems, by charles armitage brown. essays on shakespeare, by karl elze. london, macmillan & co., . the suppose travels of shakespeare. three notelets on shakespeare. thoms: london, . either at stratford school, or in the blackfriars, or else by pure { }intuition, all this exact learning must have "been absorbed. the classical course conducted by hunt and jenkins must have been far more advanced than is common in our modern colleges, in columbia or harvard, for example. for not only did rowe and knight find traces in "shakespeare" of the electra of sophocles, colman of ovid, farmer of horace and virgil, steevens of plautus, and white of euripides, which are read today in those universities; but pope found traces of dares and phrygius, and malone of lucretius, status and catullus, which are not ordinarily used as textbooks to-day in our colleges. the name and character of "imogen" is derived from an italian novel not then--and perhaps not how--translated into english. tschischwitz finds in "hamlet" the philosophy of giordano bruno, professor at wittemberg in - . all these are no stumbling-blocks to those who adhere to the baconian authorship. but, spanish, italian, greek and latin aside, was english taught at stratford school? if it were, it would have been the most wonderful of all, for, as a matter of fact in those days, and for many long years thereafter, english was a much snubbed acquirement. the idea of education was to read, talk, and quote latin, greek, and the dead languages, the child was put to his "accidence." instead of his horn-book, and scholars scorned to spend much time on their own vernacular. but even should we concede that it was genius that made the village boy master of a diction the grandest of which his mother tongue was capable, there is a greater difficulty beyond, over which { }the concession will not lift us. this difficulty has been so succinctly stated by mr. grant white, in his "essay toward the expression of shakespeare's genius," that we can not do better than quote his words. "it was only in london that those plays could have been written. london had but just before shakespeare's day made its metropolitan supremacy felt as well as acknowledged throughout england. as long as two hundred years after that time the county of each member of parliament was betrayed by his tongue..... northumberland, or cornwall, or lancashire might have produced shakespeare's mind; but had he lived in any one of those counties, or in another, like them remote in speech as in locality from london, and written for his rural neighbors instead of for the audiences of the blackfriars and the globe, the music of his poetry would have been lost in sounds uncouth and barbarous to the general ear, the edge of his fine utterance would have been turned upon the stony roughness of his rustic phraseology. his language would have been a dialect which must needs have been translated to be understood by modern english ears." * as mr. white wrote these words, did it not occur to him that, by his own chronology, ** this warwickshire rustic came to london with "venus and adonis" in his pocket, and began, almost immediately, the production of plays, not in the warwickshire dialect, which he had grown up in from his birth, but in a diction that needs no translating "to be understood by modern english ears?" * shakespeare's works, vol. i., p. cxcvi. ** id., p. cxxi. robert burns became { }great in the dialect of his home, which he made into music through the alembic of his genius. when, later in life, he essayed to write in metropolitan english, says principal shairp, "he was seldom more than a third-rate--a common clever versifier." * but this uncouth warwickshire rustic writes, as his first essay in english composition, the most elegant verses the age produced, and which for polish and care surpass his very latest works! every step in the received shakespeare's life appears to have been a miracle: for, according to them, the boy shakespeare needed to be taught nothing, but was born versed in every art, tongue, knowledge, and talent, and did every thing without tuition or preparation. and in the long vacation of this precious school how much our worthy pupil--whose paternal parent was in hiding from his creditors so that he dare not be seen at church--supplemented its curriculum by feasts of foreign travel! for it is only the careful student of these plays who knows or conceives either their wealth of exact reference to the minutest features of the lands or the localities in which their actions lie, or the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. there were no guide-books or itineraries of venice published until after william shakespeare had ceased writing for the stage: and yet, while schoolboy facts--such as that venice is built in the sea, or that gondolas take the place of wheeled vehicles, or that there is a leaning tower at pisa, or a coliseum at verona or rome--are not referred to (the out-door action in "othello" or the "merchant of venice" is * * "english men of letters. robert burns. { }always in a street or open place in that city, canals and gondolas being never mentioned), the most casual, inadvertant, and trivial details of italian matters (such as a mere tourist, however he might have observed, would scarcely have found of enough interest to mention to his neighbors on returning home), are familiarly and incidentally alluded to, making the phenomena of all this familiarity with italy quite too prominent to be overlooked. a poet like samuel rogers writes a poem on italy. all that is massive, venerable, and sublime; all that touches his heart as pitiful, or appeals to his nature as sensuous and romantic, goes down in his poem. the scenes mr. rogers depicts are those which crowd most upon the cultivated tourist to-day--the past of history that must stir the soul to enthusiasm. but here are plays, written before the days of guide-books (and if there had been any such things, they would have enlarged upon the same features that mr. rogers did), which are at home in the unobserved details which the fullest murray or baedeker find it unnecessary to mention. portia sends her servant balthazar to fetch "notes and garments" of her learned cousin, bellario, and to meet her at the "common ferry which trades to venice." there are two characters named "gobbo" in the play--a frequent venetian name in a certain obscure walk, and one which a mere tourist would be most unlikely to meet with. othello brings desdemona from her father's house to his residence in the "sagittary." in "two gentlemen of verona," valentine is made to _embark_ at verona for milan, and in "hamlet," baptista is used as the name of a woman. both of these latter were sneered at as mistakes for some hundred years, { }until one learned german discovers that baptista is not uncommonly used as a woman's name in italy, * and another learned german that, in the sixteenth century, milan and verona were actually connected by canals, ** with which the surface of italy was intersected! etc., etc. dr. elze was made a careful collation of these instances (which need not detain us here except by way of reference), in an essay on the supposed travels of shakespeare, wherein he, from the same internal evidence, regards it certain that the writer (william shakespeare he calls him), not only visited italy, but scotland, absorbing all he saw with the same microscopical exactness. and were the modern languages also taught by this myriad-minded jenkins? mr. grant white says emphatically, no! "italian and french, we may be sure, were _not_ taught at stratford school." *** and yet william shakespeare borrowed copiously from boccaccio, cinthio, and belleforest. ulrici **** says (quoting klein) that the author of "romeo and juliet" must have read "hadriana," a tragedy by an italian named groto, and mr. grant white points out that iago's speech, "who steals my purse, steals trash," etc., is a perfect paraphrase of a stanza in berni's "orlando innamorato," of which poem, says mr. white, to this day ( ) there is no english version. * a von beumont. allgemeine zeitung, oct. , . ** karl elze on shakespeare, p. . london. macmillan & co. . *** memoir. works, p. xxi. **** vol. i, p. . mr. white furnishes a translation of { }the stanza of berni, which is certainly startingly like. and yet mr. white clings to his stratford school, where "beeston" told aubrey that william shakespeare was once a school-master. perhaps mr. white refuses to be converted because he has discovered that dr. farmer discovered that, when, in the "taming of the shrew," tranio quotes terence, "he is inaccurate, and gives the passage, not as it appears in the text of the latin dramatist, but as it is misquoted in the latin grammar of william lily; a school-book in common use among our forefathers when william shakespeare was a boy." ** but (though somebody has suggested that william might have risen to be "head boy" at stratford grammar school; and been, in that capacity, intrusted with hearing the lessons of the smaller boys, whence the school-master story may have arisen), the beestou story has been rejected by all the commentators with a unanimity of which, we believe, it is the only instance, in case of a shakespearean detail. so far as we know, there has been but one effort to prove that william shakespeare was a university man. *** * ante, p. , note. ** id. p. xx. *** "some shakespearean and spenserian mss.," "american whig review," december, , but if, instead of going to school, or operating a theater, william had passed his days as a journeyman printer, he could hardly have been more at home to the mysteries of that craft. mr. blades, a practical printer, has found in the works so many terms, technical to and employed in the exact sense of the composing and press-rooms, that they seriously add to { }the enumeration of possible shakesperean vocations. for example:= `````"behold, my lords, ```although the print be little, the whole matter `````and copy of the father, ```the very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger."= witness, also, the following:= ````"you are but as a form in wax, by him imprinted. `````--_midsummer-night's dream, i, ._= ````"his heart, with your print impressed. `````--_lovés labours lost, ii, ._= a small type, called nonpareil, was introduced into english printing houses from holland about the year , and became admired and preferred beyond the others in common use. it seems to have become a favorite type with shakespeare, who calls many of his lady characters "nonpareils." prospero calls his daughter "a nonpareil." (tempest, act iii, scene d) olivia, in "twelfth night," is the "nonpareil of beauty" (act i, scene ), and in cymbeline, posthumous is made to call imogen the "nonpareil of her time" (act ii, scene ). when a certain number of pages of type have been composed they are placed in an iron frame called a "chase," laid upon an "imposing" stone, a piece of beveled wood, called a "sidestick," is placed beside the pages, and small wedges of beveled hard wood, called "coigns," or "quoins," are tightly driven in, holding the pages firmly in their places, and making a compact "form." surely there is an allusion to this in pericles iii, .= ````"by the four opposing coigns ````which the world together joins."= { }before tlie "form" is taken from the stone to be put on the press, the quoins are made very tight with a "mallet" to insure its "lifting" safely.= ```"there is no more conceit in him than there is in a mallet." `````--_ henry iv, ._= which process is called "locking-up," and when completed, the form is said, technically, to be "locked-up," or fast.= ````"fast locked-up in sleep." `````--_measure for measure, iv, ._= and to what but the care taken by a printer to make his forms "register" can we attribute the use of that word in anthony and cleopatra, act iv. scene .= ```"but let the world rank me in register-- ```a master leaver and a fugitive."= punctuation is a fruitful source of misunderstanding between an author and his printer. very few authors punctuate their manuscript as they would wish to see it in the print, and fewer yet are apt to be good natured and satisfied when the printer punctuates for them. william shakespeare may have remembered this when he wrote:= ````"wherefore stand you on nice points?" `````--_ henry vi, iv, _.= ````"stand a comma 'tween their amities." `````--_hamlet, v, ._= ````"my point and period,... ill or well." `````--_lear, iv ._= ````"points that seem impossible." `````--_pericles, v, ._= { } ````"puts the period often from his place." `````--_lucrece, line ._= ```"you find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent." ````"no levelled malice infests one comma." `````-- _timon, i, ._= ```"come we to full points here? and are et ceteras nothing?"= possibly a book-worm, or even a bookseller might draw as many similes as shakespeare did, from books--as for example:= ```"show me your image in some antique book." `````_--sonnet, . ix._= ```"has a book in his pocket with red letters in it." `````--_ henry vi, ix, ._= ````"my red dominical--my golden letter!" `````--_loves labours lost, v, ._= referring to the rubricated editions of books so common in the seventh century, or the golden letters used in the calendar; or again,= ```"to place upon the volume of your deeds ```as in a title-page, your worth of arms." `````--_pericles, , ._= ```"this man's brow, like to a title-leaf, ```foretells the nature of a tragic volume." `````--_ henry iv, i, ._= but in the following:= ```"the vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear." `````--_sonnet, . xxvii._= it is hard to be persuaded that direct allusion is not { }made to the english custom (which still obtains, as any body may see for himself by opening a book printed--wherever published--in england) of placing the typographer's imprint upon the vacant or extra leaf or leaves--where the text runs short, at the end of the volume; just as, if an american publisher, who buys a hundred copies of an english work, may stipulate to have his imprint put upon the title-page (or, perhaps, print his own title-page in this country), the last page of the book itself will invariably reveal whether the actual manufacture was in england or not; an analogy which implies technical information. an image employed by othello, who takes his wife's hand in his, and says,= ```"here's a young and sweating devil." `````--_othello, iii. ._= is, mr. blades thinks, misunderstood. if his wife's palm was the messenger, as othello suspected, of her desires to cassio, there would be some propriety--from a printer's standpoint--in calling it "a devil," for a printer's "devil" is his messenger or errand boy: though another meaning is not so far fetched in sound to a non-professional. we have mentioned that the stationer's company was a fraternity composed only of monopolists, each of whom had a monopoly, from the crown, of the printing of certain books. it was a part of their duty to give notice of this monopoly upon every impression of the book, precisely as the notice of copyright entry is obliged by law to be printed to-day upon copyrighted books. the entry was to be expressed, after the printer's name, or at least, conspicuously on the { }title-page, in the formula, "_cum privilégia ad imprimendum solum;_" and as the formula was to be incessantly used it was undoubtedly "kept standing" in the composing room. it is curious to notice, in the "taming of the shrew," act iv., scene , the recurrence of this formula in a speech of biondello: _bion._ i can not tell; except they are busied about a counterfeit assurance; take you assurance of her cum privilegio ad im-primendum solum to the church. it is to be noticed that the word "counterfeit" in the above speech, was a printer's term in those days; and, used in the printer's technical sense, would be applicable; for biondello is counseling lucertio to marry bianca out of hand, and without waiting for her father and his counselor who are discussing the marriage treaty. a "counterfeit" was a reprint (as we would say now, a "reprint in fac-simile"). * * marabren's parallel list of technical typographical terms--art., "counterfeit." we take the above from mr. blades' "shakespeare and typography." london, . again: it might be supposed that a country lad should know the ways of dogs and birds and beasts and creeping things. but it happens to be human experience that the country lad is the least likely person to turn out a naturalist. it is much more probable that some over-worked shoemaker, in some rare escape from his city garret, should find his thoughts awakened by watching an ant-hill, and succeed in years in making himself an entomologist; than that the farmer's boy, who catches bugs every day to bait his fish-hook, should turn out an entomolo{ }gist; just as it is not the farmer's daughter, but the fashionable young lady from town who tramps the fields and tears her hands for wild-flowers or wets her feet for the pond lilies. but whoever wrote the plays had found time to learn all the ways of these. says bottom, to cobweb, the fairy, in "midsummer wight's bream," "monsieur, get your weapons in your hand and kill me a red-hipped bumblebee on the top of a thistle." in the united states as well as england, there is no more likely place to find a bumblebee in midsummer than on a thistle. in "much ado about nothing," benedict says to margaret "thy wit is as quick as a greyhound's mouth. it catches." the peculiarity of a greyhound is that, unlike other dogs, it is able to catch game in its mouth as it runs; other hounds must stop to do this. in "as you like it," celia tells rosalind that monsieur le beau, who comes with his mouth full of news, will feed it to them "as pigeons feed their young," and rosalind replies, "then we shall be news crammed." pigeons bring food to their young in their crops, and cram it down their young ones' throats, as no other birds do. in "twelfth night" the clown tells viola that "fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings--the husband's the bigger." the pilchard closely resembles the herring, but is thicker and heavier, with larger scales. in the same play maria says of malvolio, "here comes the trout which must be caught with tickling." expert anglers know that by gently tickling a trout's sides and belly, it can be so mesmerized as to be taken out of the water with the hand. in "as you like it," we have the lines "for look where beatrice, like the lapwing, runs close by the ground to hear our confer{ }ence." the lapwing is a kind of plover which is very swift of foot and which, when trying to avoid being seen, keeps its head close to the ground as it runs. says lear's fool, "the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long that it had its head bit off by its young." the hedge-sparrow in england is a favorite bird for the cuckoo to impose its young upon. in "all's well that ends well," lafeu says of farolles "i took this lark for a bunting." the english bunting is a field bird of the same form and color as the lark, but inferior as a singer. and so the figures are always accurate, "the ousel-cock so black of hue," "the throstle with his note so true," "the wren with little quill," "the russet-pated chough, rising and cawing at the guns report." and so of flowers, as when perdita speaks of= `````--daffodils, ````that come before the swallow dares, and take ```the winds of march with beauty--= the writer knew that in england the daffodil blooms in february and march, while the swallow never appears until april. in none of the allusions to nature or natural phenomena in the plays, is there any such thing as guess work. * now, what was the necessity for all this technical, geographical, botanical, and occult learning, in a simple drama thrown off by an elizabethan dramatist, earning his living by catering to an elizabethan audience? it was not only unnecessary, but almost fatal to his success. the elizabethan audience did not want scientific treatises. * and see further "the natural history of the insects mentioned in shakespeare," by r. paterson. london: a. k. newman & co., leadenhall street, "the natural history of the insects mentioned in shakespeare," by r. paterson. london: a. k. newman & co., leadenhall street, . but { }nothing--from governmental polity to the stuffing of a fowl--from processes of the human mind to the management of kitchen gardens--was too small or rude for a philosopher's (let us say for francis bacon's) vast purposes. how otherwise are they to be accounted for? that shakespeare borrowed greene's famous "sea-coast" is a point either way. if he took it supposing that bohemia had a sea-coast, the omnipotent knowledge assigned him by his worshipers failed him at least once. and if he knew (as is now claimed, though on what authority we know not), that bohemia once possessed provinces on the adriatic, he knew, as usual, what the acute research of three hundred years has only just developed. and was agriculture taught at this stratford school, and politics and the art of war? and was there any thing that william shakespeare did not know? we are entitled to ask these questions, for it must be remembered that, before the appearance of the shakespearean dramas, there was practically no literature written in the english tongue. to use the words of macauley, "a person who did not read latin and greek could read nothing, or next to nothing.... the italian was the only modern language which possessed any thing that could be called a literature." ** one possessing, then, merely "small latin and less greek," could not have written "shakespeare." still less could he have written it out of gower and chaucer, and the { }shelf-full of english hooks that made up all there was in english letters. * see "was shakespeare ever a soldier?" three notelets on shakespeare, by wm. j. thoms, london. john russell smith, . ** essays. lord bacon. but if the stratford grammar-school confined its teachings to the pages of the english bible alone, it worked wonders, for bishop wadsworth goes so far as to declare, that "take the entire range of english literature--put together our best authors, who have written on subjects not professedly religious, and we shall not find, i believe, in them all, printed so much evidence of the bible being read and used, as in shakespeare alone." * yet william shakespeare had little opportunity for self-education, except these two terms at stratford school; he was a lad-of-all-work at the bankside theater, when a mere child. he was only fifty-two years old when he died. he was one of several partners in certain theatrical establishments in london, in the years when he must have put all this multitudinous learning, he had carried in his head so long, on paper. he was so active, industrious, and shrewd in those years, that he alone of the partners was able to retire with a fortune--to purchase lands and a grant of arms for his father (whence he himself might become an esquire by descent); and, in the years of leisure after his retirement, he wrote only three or four epitaphs, which no other graduate of stratford school would probably have cared to claim. * shakespeare's use of the bible. by charles wadsworth, p. . london. smith elder & co., . it has only been within the last few years that hardy spirits--like nathaniel holmes--whose education has led them to look judicially backward from effects to causes--and whose experience had impressed { }them with the idea that most effects come in natural procession from causes somewhere--were courageous enough to seek the solution of this mystery--not in what is called the "internal evidence" of the plays themselves, but in the circumstances and surroundings, that is to say, in the external evidence of their date and production. the baconian theory is simply that, so far as the records of the elizabethan period are accessible, there was but one man in england, at the date at which this shakespearean literature appeared, who could have produced it. * the history of bacon's life, his massive acquirements, his profound scholarship even as a child: his advantages of foreign travel, his ambitious acquaintance with the court: and, joined to all, his dire necessities and his successive retirements (the dates of which, when collated, coincide with the dates at which the plays--tallying in matter with the circumstantial surroundings of bacon's life as, for example, shylock appeared at about the time when bacon was most helplessly in the toils of what he calls "the lombardo"):--all this need not be recapitulated here. he was born and bred in the atmosphere of libraries. while william shakespeare was poaching on avon banks, the little francis was impressed with the utter inadequacy of aristotle's method to grapple with { }modern needs, and meditating its superseding with labors of his own. * had the plays come down to us anonymously, had the labor of discovering the author been imposed upon after- generations, i think we could have found no one of that day but bacon to whom to assign this crown. in this case it would have been resting now on his head by almost common consent."--(w. h. furness to judge holmes, third edition of "authorship of shakespeare," p. ). the gray-haired queen, who in youth had called him her little lord keeper, will not lift a hand to aid him in his poverty, or to advance him in the state, regarding him as a man of study rather than of practice and experience; and so bacon is known to have remained, bemoaning (as he himself says in a letter to burleigh, written in ) "the meanness of my [his] estate; for though i can not accuse myself that i am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get." * this is the very year, , in which robert greene "discovers that a new poet has arisen who is becoming the only shake-scene in a county;" and so far forgets himself as to become "jealous" of "william shakespeare, who, up to this time, has only been a "johannes factotum," of not much account until he borrows "our feathers." ** and so, until , bacon is driven to the jews. why should he not, in his pressing necessity for "lease of quick revenue," bethink him of the resources within himself, and seek a cover whereunder--without embarrassing his hope of future preferment--he may turn into gold his years of study and travel, by means of a quick pen? in , when he is suddenly created attorney-general, the shakespearean plays cease abruptly, to appear no more for ever. william shakespeare closes out his theatrical interest in london, and retires, to moneylending (as some say), in stratford. he dies in . * speckling, "letters and life of bacon," vol. i, p. . ** ante, p. lord bacon reaches his highest pinnacle of greatness, { }and falls, in . in , while bacon is again spending his time in the strictest privacy and retirement, there suddenly appears a folio, "the complete works of william shakespeare," amended, revised, enlarged, and improved, including at least seventeen (mr. smith says twenty-three) plays which had never appeared or been heard of in shakespeare's lifetime. few of us--outside the ranks of commentators, like mr. grant white, and others, who give their valuable lives to this study--dream how vast were the emendations and revisions, enlargements and corrections of the old shakespearean plays given to the world in this folio of . mr. white says that in the one play of "love's labours lost" there are inserted newlines in almost every speech. another, "the merry wives of windsor," according to knight, ** has double the number of lines it originally possessed in . the "henry v." has nineteen hundred new lines. the "titus andronicus" has an entire scene added, and the "much ado about nothing" and "the lear" are so altered and elaborated, with curtailment here and enlargement there, as to lead mr. knight to declare that "none but the hand of the master could have superadded them." *** but, if william shakespeare was the "master," how did his hand reach up out of the grave under stratford chancel, where it had rested seven years, to make these improvements? * cited by holmes, "authorship of shakespeare," third edition, p. . ** "studies of shakespeare," p. . *** id. and if william shakespeare in his lifetime made those revisions for heminges and condell (who appear on the title-page of this folio of as editors, and an{ }nounce in the preface that this edition is printed from the "true original copies") at stratford (where, according to his own inventory, he had neither library nor books--nor bookcase, nor writing table, for that matter), why did he not print them himself, for his own benefit, instead of performing all this labor of emendation for somebody else? he could not have been fearful lest he would lose money by them, for they had been the foundation and source of all his fortune. nor had he grown, in his old age, indifferent to gain (let the ghost of the poor "delinquent for malt delivered" assure us of that!). he could not have revised them for pure glory: for, in his previous career, while in london, he had shown no interest in them, permitting them to be surreptitiously printed by whoever, in the same town with himself, listed so to do. he had even allowed them to be mixed up with other people's trash, his name signed to all indifferently, and the whole made footballs of by the london printers, under his very nose, without so much as lifting a voice in protest, or to declare which were his and which were not. * besides, if he had revised them for the glory of his own name, why did he not cause them to be printed? nor can we suppose that he was employed to revise them, for pay, by heminges and condell, because, if they did so employ him, why did they carry the expense of the revision for seven long years, until he and his wife were both in their graves, before reimbursing themselves by printing the first folio for the market! * see post, "the new theory," where it appears that, at the time shakespeare was producing certain plays on his stage, certain others were being printed and circulated, as his, outside. last, and most wonderful { }of all, in this first folio are included all these entirely new plays which had never been heard of before! who wrote those, and why? the answer to these riddles, the baconians say, is that, when again at leisure, bacon bethought himself of his scattered progeny, and--whether proposing to publicly own them or not--whether to secure them for posterity or merely for his own pastime--he devoted that leisure to a revision of the works by means of which he had bridged the first long interval in his career. at any rate, when the revision appeared, it is matter of fact that william shakespeare was dead and in his grave, and speculation has nothing to do with that. besides the coincidence of the plays appearing during bacon's first retirement: ceasing altogether at his first elevation, and appearing in revised and improved form again after his final downfall, and during his second privacy, the baconians cite: i. contemporary statements, which include (a), sir tobie matthew's famous postscript: * "the most prodigious wit of these times is of your name, though he be known by another" (which mr. weiss ** explains, very lamely in our opinion, by arguing that the _other_ name by which bacon was known, and to which matthew alludes, was "_viscount st. albans_); (b), a letter from bacon * bacon was in the habit of sending certain of his lighter manuscripts to sir tobie, and this postscript was appended to a letter acknowledging the receipt of bacon's "great and esteemed favor of the th of april." ** "wit, humor and--shakespeare." by john weiss. boston. roberts brothers, . matthew writes this in a letter acknowledging receipt of a volume sent him by bacon. if that volume was a copy of the "first folio," the postscript would be intelligible. him{ }self, to sir john davies, who is going to meet the new king james (with whom bacon is striving for favor, looking to his own preferment), in which he commits to sir john's "faithful care and discretion" his interests at court, and adds, "so, asking you to be good to concealed poets, i continue," etc., etc.; * ii. evidence by way of innuendo, including another of matthew's postscripts (the one in which he writes to bacon, "i will not return you weight for weight, but measure for measure," etc.); also, perhaps, the injunctions of secrecy in bacon's own letters to matthew, to "be careful of the writings submitted to you, that no one see them." there is, besides, in many of bacon's preserved letters something suggestive of a "curious undermeaning, impressing the reader with an idea of more than appears on the surface." the idea of the stage, as a figure of speech, occurs in a letter to the queen: "far be it from me to stage myself," etc.; and in one to lady buckingham, "i do not desire to stage myself but for the comfort of a private life," etc. "dramatic poesy," he declares, "is as history made visible." writing to matthew, he refers to a "little work of my recreation;" and matthew, in return, banters him on writing many things "under another name." this is in , and no more "shakespeare" plays appear until othello, in . the jonson obituary verse--in which occur the encomiums so rung in our ears by the shakespeareans (and which we have--earlier in these pages--seen was all they really had behind them), which we have thought could be most easily explained on the "_nil mortuis nisi bonum_" theory--are also * holmes, "authorship of shakespeare," { }regarded, we believe, by the baconians, as innuendo. * iii. the parallelisms. that is to say, an almost identity of phraseology, found in both the baconian and shakespearean writings. the best list of these is to be found in judge holmes' book, covering some twenty-five closely-printed pages. ** of the value of this latter class of evidence, it is for every reader to judge for himself; but that a writer of exact science and moral philosophy should plagiarize from the theater, or the theater from the writer of exact science and moral philosophy; or (still more improbable) that two contemporary authors, in the full glare of the public eye, should select each other's works to habitually and regularly plagiarize upon, are altogether, it seems to the baconians, out of the question. * it is curious to find the baconians appealing to this "best evidence" for the other side. but they read it as an innuendo. for example, the verses-- "shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage or influence, cheer the crooping stage! which--since thy flight from hence, hath-mourned like night and despaired day--but for thy volume's light--" they say, do not and can not, refer to william shakespeare at all. for this was published in , and william shakespeare had been dead seven years. he could not "shine forth" again, except figuratively, in his volume, and this he already does by the publication of his works, and is admitted to do in the next line, where it is said that but for "thy volume's light" the stage would "mourn in night." the baconians, who believe that ben jonson himself was the "heminges and condell" who edited the first folio, regarded this whole poem as a sop to bacon, on ben jonson's part. ** pp. - . [ill ] [ill ] but even the conceiving of so unusual a state of affairs as a political philosopher and playwright contracting together to mutually plagiarize from each other's writ{ }ings would hardly account for the coincidence between the cottage scene (act iv, scene ) in "a winter's tale," and bacon's "essay on gardens," in which he maintained that "there ought to be gardens for all the months of the year; in which severally things of beauty may be in their season," which he proceeds to suggest: { }were we assured that the prose in the left-hand column was the poet's first rough notes for the exquisite poetry in the second, would there be any internal evidence for doubting it? and when it appears that "the essay on gardens" was not printed until , nine years after william shakespeare's death and burial, and two years after an edition of his alleged plays, rewritten and revised, had appeared (when so deliberate a "steal" would hardly be profitable), the exoteric evidence seems at least to command attention. a coincidence between a passage in "the advancement of learning" and in the play of "troilus and cressida," act ii., scene (which, we shall see later on, first appeared in print, advertised as the work of a novice, in , thereafter, within a few months, to be reissued as by william shakespeare *--who was not, at the date of that edition, either a novice or a first appearance), is worth pausing to tabulate: that the manager of a theater, in dressing up a play for the evening's audience (and _such_ an audience) should tuck in an allusion to aristotle, to "catch the ** { }ear of the groundlings" * post, "the new theory." ** it is to be noticed that no similarity of style in these opposed extracts is alleged or relied upon. --or, finding it already in, should not have a sufficient acquaintance with aristotle to scent an impropriety and take it out--is no less or no more absurd than that a philosopher, in composing so profound and weighty an essay as the "advancement of learning," should go to a cheap play-house for his reference to the greek sage. if bacon _did_ attend the theater that night to learn the opinion of aristotle (whom he had criticised at college at the age of fifteen) on young blood and philosophy, he was misled, for aristotle said not that young men ought not to _hear moral_, but ought not to _study political_ philosophy. and the error itself is proof positive--it seems to the baconians--of an identical source for the two passages. it must not be forgotten, however, that the evidence from these coincidences is cited not to an anti-shakespearean case--which is purely historical--but as cumulative to the baconian case alone. and yet, though the evidence from the "parallelisms" is the least forcible of any presented by the baconians, so systematically do they occur that the ablest baconian writer (judge holmes) claims that he has been able to reduce them to an ordo, and to know precisely where to expect them, by reference merely to a history of the life of lord bacon, and the date of the production. "when i got your 'letters and life of bacon," he writes to mr. spedding, "and read that fragment of a masque; having the dates of all the plays in my mind, i felt quite sure at once in which i should find that same matter, if it appeared anywhere (as i expected it would) and went first straight to the 'midsummer-night's dream,' and there came upon it, in the second { }act, so palpably and unmistakably that i think nothing else than a miracle could shake my belief in it." the facts that lord bacon expressed himself to the effect that the best way of teaching history was by means of the drama; that there is a connected and continuous series of historical plays (covering by reigns the entire period of the war of the roses), in the shakespearean drama from 'king john,' by way of prelude--in which the legitimate heir to the throne is set aside, and the nation plunged into civil war--to 'richard iii.' where the two roses are finally united in one line in henry vi., and winding up with the reign of henry viii.--wherein, as a grand finale to the whole, the splendor of the new line is shown in its reunited vigor"--which (with but one hiatus, the missing reign of henry vii.) is one complete cycle of english history: and that, on searching among the remains of francis bacon, a manuscript "history of henry vii." is found, which might well be the minutes for a future drama (the opening paragraph of which seems to be a recapitulation of the last scene of the richard iii. of the dramas), is certainly startling. not necessarily connected with this discovery is the further fact that mr. spodding has found, in the library of northumberland house, among certain of bacon's manuscripts, a slip of paper, upon which is scrawled eight times, in a clerky hand (not bacon's), the name "william shakespeare," together with the names of certain of the known shakespearian historical plays, and of certain (as judge holmes conjectures) other plays not now * "authorship of shakespeare," third edition, p. . { }known. * but there is nothing in this discovery more startling than the numberless other coincidences--if they be nothing more--which judge holmes has massed in his scholarly work. henry chettle, in , in his "england's mourning garment (a rhyme)," wonders that "melicert does not drop a single sable tear" over the death of "our elizabeth." it might, indeed, seem strange had william shakespeare (supposing these lines to apply to him) been the favorite he is said to have been with elizabeth. but, while neither shakespeare nor bacon sing mortuary strains, of the two (if these stories about elizabeth's love for shakespeare are true) it is certainly not strange that bacon did not; for bacon, at least, had no cause to idolize his queen. ben jonson's eulogies of shakespeare, in verse, nowhere surpass, as we have seen, his eulogies of bacon, in prose. he calls lord bacon "the acme of our language," and, as mr. thompson suggests, "no pinnacle has two acmes." "on every variety of court enfolding," continues that writer, "was bacon daily employed, writing in others' names; and, if we do not think worse of plato for personating socrates, or of cicero for personating cato," neither should ill be thought of bacon for borrowing a name "to cover his aim," etc. meanwhile, "this acme of our language 'was poor and a borrower." in , is published an anonymous pamphlet, called "ratsei's ghost." * holmes' "authorship of shakespeare," d edition, pp. - - . *** the renascence drama, p. . in it, one ratsei, a highwayman, is about to be hung, and gives some parting advice to a strolling player; tells { }him to go to london, where he would learn to be frugal and thrifty; to feed upon all men, hut let none feed on him; make his hand stranger to his pocket, his heart slow to perform his tongue's promise; and when he felt his purse well lined, to buy some place of lordship in the country; that, growing weary of playing, his money may then bring him to dignity and reputation; that he need care for no man--no, not for them that before made him proud with speaking their words on the stage. "if this satirical passage," says mr. thompson, "plainly alludes to him who went to london very meanly, and came, in time, to be exceedingly wealthy, it confirms greene's saying, that shakespeare made his money by _acting_, not by writing, plays, and by usury." * as to miss bacon's question, "what did william shakespeare do with bacon's manuscripts?" mr. thompson ** seems to think that they may yet be brought to light. they "appear to have been so many times hypothetically burned, at stratford, in the globe theater, the london fire, by their owners (by purchase) at the play-house, to hinder rivals from using them," that mr. thompson argues that "it is probable they are still to the fore." bacon's will directs certain papers laid away in boxes, cabinets, and presses, to be collected, sealed up, and put away, "so as not to have them ready for present publication." * id., p. . * renascence drama, or history made visible. by "william thompson. melbourne, . he was "not ignorant that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embracement (perhaps), yield more luster and reputation to my name, than those other which i { }have in hand." they could bide their time, and, since william shakespeare and his fellows do not dispose of them, the inference is that they were not allowed to retain them. the baconian theory, it is to be noticed, is quite indifferent as to whether william shakespeare, on first turning up at london, found employment (as mr. grant white asserts) in his "cousin's law-office" or not: or whether, at any stage in his career, either in stratford or london, he was an attorney's clerk, hard 'prentice at the trade of "noverint." (by which slur mr. fullom believes that nash meant, not that shakespeare was a "noverint," but that the young "nove-rints" of the time were "shakespeare's;" that is to say, that they scribbled, out of hand, for the stage.) the shakespearean problem is neither increased nor diminished by the proposition; even an attorney's clerk could not have written all the shakespearean pages. should it be necessary, however, to find a law-student in london who could have managed some of them, why not allow francis bacon his claim among the rest? he has, at least, this advantage of his rival; that, while it is the general impression now-a-days that william shakespeare was not a law-student, as a matter of fact francis bacon _was_. * * and too good a law student, we think, to have written the law in the "merchant of venice." for, although lord bacon was apt to discover the public feeling, and quick to array himself on the right side (and spitting at jews has always been accounted of gentiles for righteousness), he must have seen that shylock had a standing in court on the merits of his case. but portia begins her extraordinary (according to common law at least) judgment by deciding for the jew in that, not having paid the principal sum, antonio must suffer in the foreclosure of the mortgage, as it were, upon his person. this is against the letter of any known law, which gives an equity of redemption to the debtor in all such cases. her next decision is, that the jew has his election between the principal sum and the penalty, and that, with his election, not the law itself can interfere. this, again, is not law; for the law abhors a penalty, and even in a foreclosure will not allow the debtor to be mulcted in more than the face of his debt, interest, and costs. but now, having decided, against all law, for the jew, portia begins deciding for the christian, and the first point she makes is that, when shylock takes his pound, he must not take a hair's weight more or less, nor yet one ounce of blood. this, again, is clearly not law, since it is an eternal principle of jurisprudence that, when the law grants any thing it also grants everything that is necessary to the conversion of that thing to possession (as, when it grants a farm, it likewise tacitly grants a right of way to that farm). so, if shylock had had any title to his pound of flesh, he would certainly have had a title to draw as much blood as it was absolutely necessary to draw in cutting out that pound, and such portions of flesh over and above a pound as it would be absolutely necessary to cut out, providing the cutting out was done by a skillful operator and not a bungler. astounded at this turn of the tide, shylock deliberates, and finally cries, "well, give me my principal and let me go!" portia thereupon renders her fourth decision, which is the most astounding of all--namely, that, having once refused a tender of the money in open court, the jew is not entitled to change his mind and take it! since the days of moses-- certainly since the days of littleton--a tender has never quite destroyed a debt, but only the interest and costs accruing upon it, after the tender! such a glaring and high- handed sacrifice of common law and common sense to stage effect might have been conceived of by a manager anxious for the plaudits and pence of a crowded house, scarcely by a future lord chancellor of england. { }as to the bibliography of the baconian theory, there are two volumes which will probably always remain its text-books, viz., judge holmes's book, of which the first edition appeared in ; and mr. smith's, printed in , which made a convert of { }lord palmerston. mr. wilkes's exceedingly fresh and readable work, "shakespeare from an american point of view," and mr. king's "bacon versus shakespeare; a plea for the defendant," as textbooks on the other side, could hardly be expected to produce much disorder in messrs. holmes and smith's stern and compact columns of facts and argument. mr. wilkes * decides off-hand against this baconian theory at the start, and then goes on, like his predecessors, to construct a shakespeare to suit himself. it is to his praise that he has endeavored to construct this shakespeare out of the shakespearean pages, rather than to have unreined his fancy. but he makes his own particular shakespeare, nevertheless. the wilkes shakespeare is a romanist. we consider this to william shakespeare's praise, for to be a good romanist is to be a good christian, and to be one in a protestant reign is to be a consistent christian as well. but this is all the good mr. wilkes's shakespeare is. beyond that he is base-born, a man despised of his equals, and a flunkey and tidewaiter at the knees of an aristocracy to which he can not attain--an obscene jester, etc., etc.--and this author he calls shakespeare. such a one, whoever he is, is neither bacon nor raleigh, at all events. in , mr. thompson, of melbourne, australia, published a volume, "renascence drama; or, history made visible," ** devoted to an accumulation of fact and argument--rather than to a presentation of the case already made--in favor of the baconian theory. * shakespeare from an american point of view. new york: d. appleton & co., . ** melbourne: sands & mcdougall, collins street, west, . mr. { }thompson aims to answer the more refined objections to that theory, by showing that bacon's mind and art rather overgrasped than undergrasped the matter and form of these shakespearean drama, and his work is an extremely valuable and charming contribution to the pro-baconian view. in his abounding zeal for "our shakespeare," mr. king * gives us much eulogy, very little argument, and remakes but one or two points, namely, that a large proportion of the shakespearean characters are made to bear warwickshire names, such as ford, page, evans, hugh, oliver, sly, marion hacket, the fat ale-wife of wincot, curtis, burton heath, fluellen, bar-dolph, and so on; and that certain expressions which have puzzled commentators, such as "make straight" (meaning "make haste"), "quoth" (meaning "went"), the use of the word "me" in place of "for me," "old" for "frequent," etc., are warwickshire expressions, and current in no other parts of england. but, as anybody can see, the majority of these are far from being uncommon names, and are quite as prevalent in new york, for example, as they are or were in warwickshire. and if, as has been suggested, mr. manager shakespeare dressed up his friends' dialogues for his own stage, and tucked in the clowns and jades, this usage of warwick names might well be accounted for. * bacon and shakespeare: a plea for the defendant. by- thomas king. montreal: lovell printing and publishing company, . four of these names are taken out of "the merry wives of windsor," and three of them from the induction to the "taming of the shrew"--matter in the composition of which shakespeare or { }any other playwright might have had the largest hand, without entitling himself to any olympus. and if, in the dressing up, shakespeare inserted a clown or a sot here and there, to make sport, what would be more natural than that he should put into their mouths the _argot_ he had grown up amid in his boyhood, and make the drunken turnkey in "macbeth" to say, with hiccoughs, "if a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have _old_ turning the key?" for, as mr. king can see for himself, the cardinals and kings do not use these phrases; nor, we may add, are the surnames he particularizes ever bestowed on them, but only on the low-comedy characters of the plays. surely, if william shakespeare ever were forced "upon the country," as the lawyers say, as against my lord bacon, he would wish his case to the jury rather without mr. king's "plea" than with it. as a "plea" on any side of an historical question, it is, to be sure, nothing, if not candid; but, as a personal appeal to posterity to, willy-nilly, believe that certain players and others in the age of elizabeth knew not guile, it is touching and beautiful in the extreme. "who shall, say heminges and condell lied?" * "could rare ben jonson, who is worthy of our love and respect, have lied?" ** * "bacon versus shakespeare: a plea for the defendant." by-thomas king. montreal, and rouse's point, new york: lovell printing, etc., company, , p. . ** ibid., p. . heminges and condell "profess that 'they have done this office to the dead only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our shakespeare.' yet their utter negligence, shown in their fellow's volume, is no evidence of their pious friendship, nor perhaps of their care or their intelligence. the publication was not, i fear, so much an offering of friendship as a pretext to obtain the copyright.' (disraeli, "amenities of authors-- shakespeare.") did shakespeare practice a deceit upon his { }noble and generous patron? could _he_ be guilty of a lie?" * and so on. to much the same effect (the reverence due the name "shakespeare," the improbability of jonson and others telling an untruth, etc.) is an anonymous volume, "shakespeare not an impostor, by an english critic," ** published in ; and finally, in , was published a paper, read before the royal society of literature, by c. m. ingleby, m. a., ll.d., a vice-president *** of the same. dr. ingleby is severe upon all anti-shakespeareans, whose minds he likens to "macadam's sieves," which "retain only those ingredients which are unsuited to the end in view" (whatever that may mean), and thinks that "the profession of the law has the inevitable effect of fostering the native tendency of such minds." unlike the others, however, dr. ingleby does not confine himself to expressions of his interest in the anti-shakespeareans "as examples of wrong-headedness," but attempts an examination of the historical testimony. in favor of the shakespearean authorship, he names seven witnesses, viz., john harrison, francis meres, robert greene, henry chettle, heminges, condell, and ben jonson. john harrison was the printer (publisher) who published the "venus and adonis" in , and the "lucrece" in . * ibid., p. . ** george townsend (according to allibone), london: g. routledge & co., farringdon street, . *** "shakespeare: the man and the book." london: josiah adams, trubner & co., , part l, p. . "the authorship of the works attributed to shakespeare." each of these was without { }an author's name on the title-page, though each was dedicated to southampton, in an address dedicatory, signed "william shakespeare." this is all that the harrison evidence amounts to, except that dr. ingleby says, "it is to me quite incredible that harrison would have done this unless shakespeare had written the dedications, or at least had been a party to them." * as to meres, anybody can see by reading him that he wrote as a _critic_, and not as an historian. ** to subpoena greene as a witness to shakespeare's genius, is at least a bold stroke; for, as has been seen, greene is very emphatic to the effect that william shakespeare was a mere "johannes factotum," or jack-of-all-trades, who trained in stolen plumage, and the shakespeareans (dr. ingleby alone excepted) have universally exerted themselves to break the force of this testimony by proving greene a drunkard, jealous, etc. *** greene { }was a graduate of cambridge--a learned man--"one of the fathers," says lamb, "of the english stage." * ibid., p. . ** "palladis tamia, wit's commonwealth," . *** that robert greene was much more than a drunkard and a pretender, but that, to the contrary, he had many admirers who were not unaware of the effrontery of his debtor, shakespeare, a search among the old literature of the day would reveal. in a quarto tract, dated , "greene's funeralls, by r. b., gent.," is a copy of verses, the last stanza of which runs: "greene is the pleasing object of an eye greene pleased the eye of all that looked upon him; greene is the ground of every painter's dye, greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him: nay, more; the men that so eclipsed his fame, purloined his plumes, can they deny that same?" hallam believes that the last two lines are directed principally at william shakespeare. ("literature of europe," part ii., ch. vi., p. , note.) a selection of his poems, edited by lamb, is printed in bohn's standard library. but by far the most careful account of greene's career, as connected with "william shakespeare, is to be found in "the school of shakespeare," by richard simpson, london: chatto & windus, , vol. ii., p. . he does not seem to have approved of william shakespeare's borrowing his plumes; but the impression that he was a monster of debauchery and drunkenness is derived wholly from his own posthumous work, "the confessions of robert greene," etc., london, , which lays the black paint on so thickly that it should have put the critics on their guard. greene was probably no worse than his kind. henry chettle edited greene, and personally deprecated some of its hard sayings as to shakespeare, on account of his (shakespeare's) being a clever, civil sort of fellow, and of "his facetious grace in writing;" but more particularly, no doubt, because "divers of worship" had taken him up, and he (chettle) did not wish to appear as approving slander of a reigning favorite. heminges and condell were men of straw, whose names are signed to the preface to the "first folio," who otherwise bear no testimony one way or the other, but whose book, as will be demonstrated further on, is an unwilling witness against its purported author. and ben jonson, who brings up the rear of this precious seven, has been already disposed of. that theory must be pretty soundly grounded in truth, against which there is nothing but rhetoric to hurl, and, in our opinion, it would be entirely safe--if not for the baconians, for the anti-shakespeareans, at least--to rest their case on the arguments for the other side. and we believe the more { }thoughtful among shakespeareans are beginning to recognize it, and coming to comprehend that, if they are to keep their shakespeare they must re-write their "biographies;" spend less time in proving him to have been an epitome of the moral virtues--beyond the temptation of deer stealing, beer drinking, and skylarking, etc.--and devote more attention to his opportunities for acquiring the lore and technical knowledge his alleged pages so accurately handle. especially has mr. halliwell phillips, in his little book (in which he binds himself to cite no dates or authorities subsequent to ), * impressed us as endeavoring to meet this emergency. but we find that he has not met it. he has, indeed, developed many details of curious interest--as that john shakespeare was, in april, , fined twelve pence for throwing muck into the street in front of his house; and that he was several times a candidate for high bailiff of stratford (or mayor, as the office was afterward called) before finally arriving at that dignity in ; that july , , there was heard at worcester assizes a curious lawsuit, brought by dr. john hall, shakespeare's son-in-law, against a neighbor for slandering his wife (susannah shakespeare), which suit appears to have been "fixed" in some way before coming to trial. * outlines of the life of shakespeare. brighton. printed for the author's friends, . we should add to our list of hooks mr. o. follet's two able pamphlets on the baconian theory. sandusky, ohio, . mr. phillips brings much learning to prove that william may have been "pre-contracted" to anne hathaway--that his death may have been from malarial fever { }rather than inebriation--which have nothing at all to do with the question or the practical difficulties cited by the anti-shakespeareans, one way or the other. but as to those practical difficulties, he brings no light and has no word to say. { } part vi. the new theory--the sonnets--conclusion. [illustration: ] f a matter so indifferent as the number of pebbles in demosthenes' mouth when he practiced oratory on the beach, no effort of credulity can be predicated. but when a proposition is historical and capable of proving itself, it is, indeed, the skeptic who believes the most. it would be interesting, for example, to compile a catalogue of the reasons why a, b, and c, and their friends, doubt the real shakespeare story, and cling to the manufactured tradition. a will tell us he believes it because somebody else (bacon will do as well as anybody) wrote enough as it was, and was not the sort of man who would surrender any of the glory to which he was himself entitled, to another. b, because, when somebody else wrote poetry (for example, bacon's "paraphrase of the psalms"), his style was quite another than the style of the dramas. c, because he is satisfied that william shakespeare spent some terms at stratford school, and was any thing but unkind to his wife. d, because the presumption is too old to be disturbed; as if we should always go on believing in william tell and the man in the moon, because our ancestors believed in them! and so on, through the alphabet. it is so much easier, for instance, to believe that miracles should appear by the page, or that universal wisdom should spring fully { }armed from the brain of a warwickshire clown, than that francis bacon, or somebody else, should write anonymously, or in two hands, or use as a nomme de plume the name of a living man, instead of inventing one de novo. now, say the new theorists, if at about that time, a living nomme de plume should happened to be wanted, whose name was more cheaply purchasable than that of a young "johannes factotum," of the blackfriars, who, by doing any thing and every thing that was wanted, and saving every honest penny he turned, actually became able to buy himself a coat-of-arms (the first luxury he ever appears to have allowed himself out of his increasing prosperity) * and a county seat? four or five years before our historical william shakespeare had bethought himself of wandering to london, one james burbage, father of richard, the actor, had built the blackfriars theater, a plain, rough building on the site of the present publishing office of the "times." * we happen on traces of the fact that william shakespeare's particular weakness was his "noble descent" very often, in exploring the annals of these times, and that his fellow actors by no means spared his weakness. "it was then a current joke to identify shakespeare with 'the conqueror,' or 'rufus,' as if his pretensions to descent from the norman dukes were known" ("ben jonson's quarrel with shakspeare," "north british review," july, ). and certain lines in the "poetaster" are supposed to be a fling at this weakness of shakespeare, as the whole play is believed to be a hit at marlow (id.). we shall see how this weakness was fostered by the new set into which circumstances forced shakespeare, later on. before its door (for the blackfriars will answer as well as the globe) we may, perhaps, { }imagine a rustic lad--fresh from stratford, and footsore from his long tramp, attracted by the crowd and the lights, standing idle and agape. possibly, then, riding up, some gallant threw young william his horse's bridle, and william shakespeare had found employment in london. by attention to business, william, in time, may have, as rowe thinks, come to control the horse-holding business, and take his predecessors into his pay; until they became known as "shakespeare's boys," and the young speculator's name penetrated to the inside of the theater. in course of time he becomes a "_servitour_" (what we now call a "super," i. e., supernumerary) inside, and ultimately (according to rowe, an actor himself, and the nearest in point of time to william shakespeare to write his biography) "the reader" * of the establishment; and naturally, therefore, stage editor of whatever is offered. he has no royal road to learning at his command, nor does he want one. the "knack at speech-making," which had delighted the rustic youth of stratford, mellowed by the new experiences which surround him, is all he needs. not only the plays of greene and others, which he now remodeled (and improved, no doubt), but essays of his own, became popular. the audience (we shall see more of them further on) called for "shakespeare's plays," and his name came to possess a market value. * in this capacity he read and accepted ben jonson's "every man in his humour," which was the beginning of the intimacy which ended with their lives. the dramas we now call "shakespearean" surely did appear in his lifetime, and under his name. were { }they ever performed at his theater? let us glance at the probabilities. the "theaters" of this day are barely more than inclosures, with a raised platform for the performers, and straw for the audience to stand or go to sleep in, as they prefer. votton, in a letter to bacon, * says that the fire that destroyed the globe theater burned up nothing but "a little wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks." sir philip sidney, writing in , ridicules the poverty of the scenic effects and properties of the day in an often-quoted passage: "you shall have asia of the one side and afrieke of the other, and so many other under kingdomes that the plaier, when hee comes in, must ever begin with telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. now, you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then you must believe the stage to be a garden: by-and-by we have news of a shipwreck in the same place; and we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. upon the back of that comes a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave, while, in the mean time, two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field!" ** * smith's "bacon and shakespeare," p. . ** "the defence of poesie," edition , p. . and m. taine has drawn a life-like picture of the audience which applauded this performance: "the poor could enter as well as the rich; there were sixpenny, twopenny, even penny seats.... if it rained, and it often rained in london, the people in { }the pit, botchers, mercers, bakers, sailors, apprentices, receive the streaming rain on their heads... they did not trouble themselves about it. while waiting for the pieces they... drink beer, crack nuts, eat fruit, howl, and now and then resort to their lists: they have been known to fall upon the actors, and turn the theater upside down. at other times they were dissatisfied and went to the tavern to give the poet a hiding or toss him in a blanket,... when the beer took effect there was a great upturned barrel in the pit, a receptacle for general use. the smell arises, and then comes the cry, 'burn the juniper!' they burn some in a plate in the stage, and the heavy smoke fills the air. certainly the folk there assembled could scarcely get disgusted at any thing, and can not have had sensitive noses. in the time of rabelais there was not much cleanliness to speak of. remember that they were hardly out of the middle age, and that, in the middle age, man lived on a dunghill." mr. white assures us further, that pickpockets were apt to be plentiful among this audience, and when discovered, were borne upon the stage, pilloried in full view, * and there left, the play going on meanwhile around them; and, moreover, that the best seats sold were on the stage itself; where any of the audience, who could pay the price, could sit, recline, walk, or converse with the actors engaged in the performance," while pages brought them rushes to stretch upon, and---- * "kempe, the actor, in his 'nine days' wonder,' a. d. , compares a man to 'such an one as we tye to a poast on our stage for all the people to wonder at when they are taken pilfering.'" ("shakespeare," by richard grant white, vol. i., p. .) { }pipes of tobacco with which to regale themselves. * "practicable" scenery of any sort, even the rudest, was utterly unknown, ** and it is thought that the actors relied on barely more than the written action of the piece for their guidance. in the plays of this period we come continually on such stage directions as "here they two talke and rayle what they list;" "all speak "here they all talke," etc., *** which proves that much of the dialogue was trusted to the inspiration of the moment--to which inspiration the gallants and pickpockets may not unnaturally have contributed. * ibid. ** whenever we come on a stage direction, therefore, which supposes "practicable" scenery in a play, we may assert with confidence, that the same was written in or after , up to which date there was no such thing as practicable machinery. in the original edition of "the tempest," for instance, there is no intimation, by way of stage direction, that the first scene occurs on shipboard. in the first edition of "as you like it" there is no mention of a forest in the stage direction. nor in the early quartos of "romeo and juliet" is there any intimation that juliet makes love in a balcony. "what child is there, that, coming to a play, and seeing thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is thebes?" says sidney, in his "defence of poesie."--(r. g. white's "shakespeare's scholar," p. , note.) trap-doors, however, were probably in very early use; at least, we find in a comedy by middleton and dekkar a character called "trap-door." there seems, also, to have been pillars that turned about, and a writer in the times of james i. mentions that "the stage varied three times in one tragedy." *** these stage directions are taken from greene's "tu quoque," a. d. , two years before shakespeare died, and long after, according to the commentators, he had ceased writing for the stage. the principal burden of entertaining the audience rested with the clown, who, unembarrassed by any { }reference to the subject-matter of the play, popped in and out at will, cracked his jokes, danced and sung and made himself familiar with the outsiders upon the stage. before an audience satisfied with this rudimentary setting, upon a stage crowded with smirking gallants and flirting maids of honor, we are assured that hamlet and wolsey delivered their soliloquies, anthony his impassioned oratory, and isabella her pious strains; while the clowns and pot-wrestlers discoursed among themselves of athens and troy, and hecuba and althea, of galen and paracelus, of "writs of detainer," and "fine and recovery," and "præmunire," and of the secrets of the pharmacopoeia! "at this public theater," says mr. smith, "to which every one could obtain access, and the lowest of the people ordinarily resorted... we are called upon to believe that the wonderful works which we so greatly admire and feel we can only appreciate by careful private study--that not only englishmen like coleridge confess, in forty years of admiring study of greek, latin, english, italian, spanish, and german philosophers, literature, and manners, to have found bursting upon him with increased power, wisdom, and beauty in every step," * but foreigners like schlegel, jean paul, and gervinus, "have fallen down before in all but heathen adoration"--were performed. in , when we force a common-school education at state expense upon the people, the shakespearean plays are disastrous to managers. * bacon and shakespeare, p. . they "lose money on shakespeare," and unless "carpentry and french"--unless ballet and spectacle are liberally resorted to, are { }draped down to desolate houses and financial ruin. "shakespeare" is "over the heads" of -------- in these days of compulsory education. and yet we are calmly asked to credit the astounding statement that in and about the year , in london, these grave, intellectual, and stately dialogues are taking by storm the rabble of the bankside, and entrancing the tradesmen and burghers of the days when to read was quite as rare an accomplishment as serpent-charming is today--when, if sovereigns wrote their own names, it was all they could do--and when the government could not afford to hang a man who could actually write his name. * "and yet," to quote mr. smith again, "it was from the profit arising from this wretched place of amusement that shakespeare realized the far from inconsiderable fortune with which in a few years he retired to stratford-upon-avon." if not actual intellectual giants, the rabble of that day must have been the superiors in literary perception of some very eminent gentlemen who were to come after them, like, for example, fuller, evelyn, pepys, dryden, dennis, kymer, hume, pope, addison, steele, and jonson, whose comments on our immortal drama we have set forth in the first part of this work. ** only we happen to know they were not. * benefit of clergy was only abolished in england by acts and , george iv., c. , sec. , in , fifty-three years ago; in the united states it had been disposed of (though it had never been availed of) by act of congress, april , . ** ante, pp. - . { } as an alternative to believing that these pearls, over which this nineteenth century gloats, were cast before the swine of the sixteenth; the theory we are now considering offers, as less violent an attack upon common sense, the supposition that what we now possess under the name of "shakespeare's plays" were _not_ produced upon the stage of any play-house in those days, but were _printed_ instead, the name of william shakespeare having been attached to them as surety for a certain circulation. the well-attested fact that william shakespeare was a play-writer is not ignored by this supposition; for the new theorists believe that, although no fragment of the shakespeare work now survives, its character can be readily determined. from what knowledge we possess of the tone and quality of the audiences of those days, it is not difficult to imagine the rudeness and crudity of the plays. these were the formative days of audiences, and, therefore, the formative days of plays. sir henry wotton, in a letter from which we have just quoted, written to lord bacon in , refers to one of these plays called "the hog hath lost its pearl." says this letter: "now it is strange to hear how sharp-witted the city is; for they will needs have sir thomas swinnerton, the lord mayor, be meant by the hog, and the late lord treasurer by the pearl." there is no disputing the fact, at least, that the plays we call "shakespeare's" are cast in a mold by themselves, and have no contemporary exemplar. the student of these days knows the fact that dekker, webster, massinger, jonson, or any other who wrote in periods that are counted "literature," made no fortunes at their work. that such as this one alluded to by wotton--and one example will suffice--were what the town ran to see in those days, mere local sketches--{ }lampoons on yesterday's events; coarse parables, the allusions in which could be met and enjoyed by the actors themselves (were to the popular taste, that is to say), is much easier to conceive than that the "hamlet" and the "lear" were to the popular taste. one dr. ileywood (who, it is to be noted, is sometimes called the "prose shakespeare") is understood to have produced some two hundred and twenty of this sort of sketches alone; and, possibly, this was the sort of "early essays at dramatic poetry" which aubrey speaks of: this "the facetious grace in writing that approves his wit" which chettle assigns to william shakespeare--mere sketches in silhouette of the town's doings, such as would appeal, as this sort still do in cities, to a popular and local audience. there is some curious testimony on the subject, which looks to that effect. cartwright, * in his lines on fletcher, says:= ```"shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lies ```i' th' ladies' questions, and the fools' replies, ```old-fashioned wit, which walked from town to town ```in turned hose, which our fathers called the clown; ```whose wit our nice times would obsceneness call, ```and which made bawdry pass for comical. ```naturk was all his art: thy vein was free ```as his, but without his scurrility."= * poems, , p. . one leonard ditrges--who, farmer says (in his essay on "the learning of shakespeare"), was "a wit of the town" in the days of shakespeare--wrote some verses laudatory of william shakespeare, which (farmer says again) "were printed along with a spurious edi{ }tion of shakespeare" in . in this copy of verses occur such lines as--= ```"nature only led him, for look thorough ```this whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow ```one phrase from greeks, nor latins imitate, ```nor once from vulgar languages translate."= a startling declaration to find made, even in poetry, concerning compositions which judge holmes has demonstrated are crowded with classical borrowings, imitations drawn from works untranslated from their originals at the date when quoted; so that it would be impossible to say that the quoter found them in english works and took them with no knowledge of their original source! * "nature itself was all his art," says fuller, and denham, again, asserts that "all he [shakespeare] has was from old mother witt." ** and dominie ward says, to the same effect, in his diary, "i have heard that mr. shakespeare was a natural witt, without any art at all;" *** though, of course, this was, and could have been, nothing more than matter of report. * see holmes's "authorship of shakespeare," third edition, p. . ** farmer, p. . *** "diary of rev. john ward, vicar of stratford, extending from to ," p. ; london, , p. . shakespeare took his "taming of the shrew" from greene's "taming of a shrew," there being no copyright to prevent. it is probable that, in the production of these plays, 'william shakespeare was not always scrupulous to compose "without blotting out a line" himself. that he was a reckless borrower, and scissored unconscionably from robert greene and others (so much so that { }greene wrote a whole book in protest), we have greene's book itself to testify. from its almost unintelligible pages we can glean some idea of the turgid english of the day. it was, of course, in the composition of this popular english that shakespeare, by surpassing greene, awakened the latter's jealousy. otherwise, there would have been no superiority in shakespeare over greene which greene could have perceived: or, at least, no cutting into greene's profits wherein greene could have found cause for jealousy. for, if greene had continued to earn money indifferently to whether shakespeare carried on his trade or not, he would not have been "jealous." but so fluent and clever a fellow as this william shakespeare of stratford, who could hold, when a mere boy, his rustic audience with a speech over a calf-sticking, was a dangerous rival among the hackney stock-playwrights of london, and would easily have made himself invaluable to his management by dashing off scores of such local sketches as "the hog hath lost his pearl," suggested by the current events of the day. but, even if "hamlet," "othello," "king lear," "macbeth," and "julius cæsar" could have been produced by machinery, and engrossed currente calamo, (so that the author's first draft should be the acting copy for the players), they could have hardly been composed, nowadays, without a library. and even had william shakespeare possessed an encyclopaedia (such as were first invented two hundred years or so after his funeral) he would not have found it inclusive of all the reference he needed for those five plays alone. they can not be studied as they are capable of being { }studied--as they were found capable of being studied by coleridge and gervinus--without a library. and yet are we to be asked to believe they were composed without one?--in the days when such a thing as a dictionary even was unknown! who ever heard of william shakespeare in his library, pulling down volumes, dipping into folios, peering into manuscripts, his brain in throe and his pen in labor, weaving the warp and woof of his poetry and his philosophy, at the expense of greece and rome and egypt; pillaging alike from tomes of norseman lore and southern romance--for the pastime of the rabble that sang bawdy songs and swallowed beer amid the straw of his pit, and burned juniper and tossed his journey-actors in blankets? it is always interesting to read of the habitudes of authors--of paper-saving pope scribbling his "iliad" on the backs of old correspondence, of spenser by his fireside in his library at kilcolman castle, of scott among his dogs, of gibbon biting at the peaches that hung on the trees in his garden at lausanne, of schiller declaiming by mountain brook-sides and in forest paths, of goldsmith in his garrets and his jails. even of chaucer, dead and buried before shakespeare saw the light, we read of his studies at cambridge, his call to the bar, and his chambers in the middle temple. but of william shakespeare--after ransacking tradition, gossip, and the record--save and except the statement of ben jonson how he had heard the actor's anecdote about his never blotting his lines--not a word, not a breath, can be found to connect him with, or surprise him in any agency or employment as to the composition of the plays we { }insist upon calling his--much less to the possession of a single book! did william shakespeare own a library? had we found this massive draught upon antiquity in the remains of an immortal milton or a mortal tupper, or in all the range of letters between, we should not have failed to presume a library. why should we believe that william shakespeare needed none?--that, as his pen ran, he never paused to lift volume from the shelf to refresh or verify his marvelously retentive recollection? there was no astor or mercantile library around the corner from the globe or the blackfriars, in those days. and, as for his own possessions, he leaves in his will no hint of book or library, much less of the literature the booksellers had taken the liberty of christening with his name! where is the scholar who glories not in his scholarship? by universal testimony, the highest pleasure which an author draws from his own completed work, the pride of the poet in his own poem, is their chiefest payment. the simple fact--which stands out so prominently in the life of this man that nobody can gainsay it--that william shakespeare took neither pride nor pleasure in any of the works which passed current with the rest of the world as his, might well make the most casual student of those days suspicious of a claim that, among his other accomplishments, william shakespeare was an author at all. just here we are referred to a passage in fuller's "worthies:" "many were the wit combats," says fuller, "between shakespeare and ben jonson;... i beheld them," etc. but fuller was only eight years old when shakespeare died, and possibly spoke from hearsay, as it is hardly probable that an infant of such { }tender years was permitted to spend his nights in "the mermaid." besides, these "wit combats" at "the mermaid" are now said to be "_wet_ combats," i. e. drinking-bouts, by a long-adopted misprint. as a matter of fact, unless we are misled by a typographical error in the edition before us, * what fuller { }did actually say was, not "wit combats," but "wet combats." but even if they were "wit combats," and not friendly contests at ale-guzzling, like the early tournament at "piping pebworth" and "drunken bidford," the "wit" could not have been colossal, if we may judge from one example preserved in the ashmolean manuscripts at oxford, as stated by capell. "ben" (jonson) and "bill"' (shakespeare) propose a joint epitaph. * the history of the worthies of england. endeavored by thomas fuller, d.d. two volumes. (first printed in .) a new edition, with a few explanatory notes by john nichols, f. a.s. london, edinburgh, and perth. printed for f. c. & j. rivington and others. the reference to william shakespeare is at page of volume ii., and is as follows: "warwickshire "writers since the reformation. "william shakespeare was born at stratford-on-avon, in this county, in whom three eminent poets may seem in some sort to be compounded. . martial in the warlike sound of his surname (whence some may conjecture him of a military extraction), hasli-vibrans or shake-speare. . ovid, the most naturall and witty of poets; and hence it was that queen elizabeth, coming into a grammar school, made this extemporary verse-- "persius a crab-staffe, bawdy martial, ovid a fine wag. " . plautus who was an exact commedian, yet never any scholar, as one shakespeare (if alive) would confess himself. adde to all these that, though his genius generally was jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could (when so disposed) be solemn and serious, as appears by his tragedies; so that heraclitus himself (i mean if secret and unseen) might afford to smile at his comedies, they were so merry; and democritus scarce forbear to sigh at his tragedies, they were so mournfull. "he was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, poeta non fit sed nascitur, 'one is not made but born a poet.' indeed, his learning was very little, so that as cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so nature itself was all the art which was used upon him. many were the wet-combates betwixt him and ben jonson; which two i beheld like a spanish great gallion and an english man of war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention. he died anno domini... and was buried at stratford-upon-avon, the town of his nativity." ben begins:= ````"here lies ben jonson, ````who was once one--"= shakespeare concludes:= ```"that while he lived, was a slow thing, ```and now, being dead, is no-thing."= this being the sort of literature which william shakespeare's pen turned out during his residence in london, he could manage very well without a library. and it was the most natural thing in the world that, after retiring to the shade of stratford, it should have produced, on occasion, the famous epitaphs on his friends elias james and "thinbeard." at all events, this is a simpler explanation than the "deterioration of power," for which no one has assigned a sufficient reason," which halliwell * was driven to assume in order { }to account for this drivel from the pen which had written "hamlet." * "life of shakespeare," p. . london, . and, moreover, it is a satisfactory explanation of what can not be explained in any other way (and which no shakespearean has ever yet attempted to explain at all), of the fact that william shakespeare, making his last will and testament at stratford, in , utterly ignored the existence of any literary property among his assets, or of his having used his pen, at any period, in accumulating the competency of which he died possessed. had william shakespeare been the courtly favorite of two sovereigns (which mr. hallam doubts * ), it is curious that he never was selected to write a masque. masques were the standard holiday diversions of the nobles of the day, to which royalty was so devoted that it is said the famous inigo jones was maintained for some years in the employment of devising the trappings for them alone (though, of course, it is no evidence, either way, as to the matter we have in hand). but if william shakespeare was the shrewd and prosperous tradesman that we have record of (and, that he came to london poor and left it rich, everybody knows), was he not shrewd enough, as well, to see that his audiences did not require philosophical essays and historical treatises; that he need not waste his midnight oil to verify the customs of the early cyprians, or pause to explore for them the secrets of nature? we may assert him to be a "great moral teacher" to-day; but, had he been a "great moral teacher" then, he would have set his stage to empty houses. he could have earned the same money with much less trouble to { }himself. * "literature of europe," vol. iii., p. (note). the gallants would have resorted to his stage daily (as they would have gone to the baths if they had been in old home); and the ha'penny seats have enjoyed themselves quite as much had he given them the school of "the hog hath lost his pearl," or "the devil is an ass," or the tumbles of a clown. why should this thrifty manager have ransacked greek and latin and italian letters, the romance of italy and the sagas of the horth (or, according to dr. farmer, rummaged the cloisters of all england, to get these at second hand)? had these all been collected in a public library, would he have had leisure to sit down and pull them over for this precious audience of his, these gallants and groundlings--when his money was quite as safe if he merely reached out and took the nearest spectacle at hand (as he took his "taming of the shrew," "winter's tale," "sea-coast of bohemia," and all--from robert greene)? but, if we may be allowed to conceive that it was the _action_ (that is to say, the "business") of the shakespearean plays that delighted this shakespearean audience (that filled the cockpit, galleries, and boxes, while poor ben jonson's, according to digges, would hardly bring money enough to pay for a sea-coal fire), and that certain greater than the manager used this action thereafter as a dress for the mighty transcripts caused to be printed under voucher of the popular manager's name--if we may be allowed to conceive this--however exceptional, it is at least an accounting for the shakespearean plays as we possess them to-day, without doing violence to human experience and the laws of nature. southampton, raleigh, essex, rutland, and montgomery are young noblemen of wealth and leisure, { }who "pass away the time merely in going to plays every day." * we have seen that the best seats were on the stage, and these, of course, the young noblemen occupied. there were no actresses in those days--the female parts were taken by boys--but titled ladies and maids of honor were admitted to seats on the stage as well as the gallants, and a thrifty stage manager might easily make himself useful to both. if my lord southampton was bosom friend to william shakespeare (as rumor has it), their intimacy arose probably through some such service. a noble youth of nineteen, of proverbial gallantry and sufficient wealth (though, it must be remembered, as among the fortunes of his day, a comparatively poor man; not able to give away $ , at a time, for instance), was not at so great a loss for a friend and alter ego in london in (the date at which the "venus and adonis" is dedicated to him) as to be forced to forget the social gulf that separated him from an economical commoner (lately a butcher in the provinces), however popular a stage manager, except for cause; and it takes considerable credulity to believe that he did forget it (if he did), through being dazzled by the transcendent literary abilities of the economical commoner aforesaid. * "my lord southampton and lord rutland come not to the court, the one but very seldom; they pass away the time merely in going to plays every day."--(letter from rowland white to sir robert sidney, dated october , , quoted by kenny, "life and genius of shakespeare." london: longmans, . p. , note.) but it may be noted that southampton and raleigh were opposed to each other in politics. for southampton lived and died without ever being suspected of a devotion to literature or literary pur{ }suits; and, besides, the economical commoner had not then written (if he ever did write) the "hamlet" and "lear," and those other evidences of the transcendent literary ability which could seduce a peer outside his caste. that the gallants and stage managers of the day understood each other, just as they perhaps do today, there is reason to believe. dekker, in his "gull's horn-book," says that, "after the play was over, poets adjourned to supper with knights, where they in private unfolded the secret parts of their dramas to them." by "poets" in this extract is meant, as appears from the context, the writers of dramas for the stage; such as, perhaps, william shakespeare was. but whether these suppers after the play were devoted to intellectual and philosophical criticism is a question for each one's experience to aid him in answering. whether william shakespeare was admitted to this noble companionship, or was only emulous of the honor, we have no means of conjecture, as either might account for the fact that with his first savings he purchased a grant of arms for his father, thus obtaining not only an escutcheon, but one whole generation of ancestry; a transaction which involved, says dr. farmer, the falsehood aud venality of the father, the son and two kings at arms, and did not escape protest; * for if ever a coat was "cut from whole cloth," we may be sure that this coat-of-arms was the one. * a complaint must have been made from some quarter that this application had no sufficient foundation, for we have, in the herald's college, a manuscript which purports to be "the answer of garter and clarencieux, kings of arms, to a libellous scrowl against certain arms supposed to be wrongfully given in which the writers state, under the head "shakespeare," that "the person to whom it was granted had borne magistracy, and was justice of peace, at stratford- upon-avon; he married the daughter and heir of arden, and was able to maintain that estate." the whole of this transaction is involved in considerable, and, perhaps, to a great extent, intentional obscurity; and it still seems doubtful whether any grant was actually made in the year . in the year , the application must have been renewed in a somewhat altered form. under that date, there exists a draft of another grant, by which john shakespeare was further to be allowed to impale the ancient arms of arden. in this document a statement was originally inserted to the effect that "john shakespeare showed and produced his ancient coat-of-arms, heretofore assigned to him whilst he was her majesty's officer and bailiff of that town." but the words "showed and produced" were afterward erased, and in this unsatisfactory manner the matter appears to have terminated. it is manifest that the entries we have quoted contain a number of exaggerations, one even of positive misstatements. the "parents and antecessors" of john shakespeare were not advanced and rewarded by henry vii.; but the maternal ancestors, or, more probably, some more distant relatives of william shakespeare, appear to have received some favors and distinctions from that sovereign. the pattern of arms given, as it is stated, under the hand of clareneieux (cooke, who was then dead), is not found in his records, and we can place no faith in his allegation. john shakespeare had been a justice of the peace, merely ex officio, and not by commission, as is here insinuated; in all probability he did not possess "lands and tenements of the value of five hundred pounds;" and robert arden, of wilmecote, was not a "gentleman of worship."--(kenny, "life and genius of shakespeare," p. . london: longmans, .) { }whoever wrote hamlet's soliloquy and antony's oration might well have written the "venus and adonis" and the "lucrece," and was quite equal to the bold stroke of describing the former (the most splendidly sensuous poem in any language--a poem that { }breathes in every line the blase and salacious exquisite), as the first heir of the invention of a busy london manager and whilom rustic lothario among 'warwickshire milkmaids. the question as to the authorship of the one hundred and fifty-four "sonnets," which appeared (with the exception of two, printed in , in a collection of verses called for some un-suggested reason "the passionate pilgrim") in , need not enter into any anti-shakespearean theory at all. except that one francis meres, writing in --eleven years before--had reported william shakespeare to have circulated certain "sugared sonnets among his private friends;" * and that the one hundred and thirty-sixth of the series says the author's name is "will" (the common nickname of a poet of those days), ** there is nothing to connect them with william shakespeare except his name on the title-page--in the days when we have seen that printers put whatever name they pleased or thought most vendable, upon a title-page. (when the aforesaid "passionate pilgrim" was printed in --also as by william shakespeare--dr. ileywood recognized two of his own compositions incorporated in it, and promptly claimed them. "no evidence," says mr. grant white, *** in commenting on this performance, "of any public denial on shakespeare's part is known to exist. it was not until the publication of the third edition of the poem, in , that william shakespeare's name was removed.") * hallam does not think these are the sonnets mentioned by meres.--("literature of europe," vol. iii., p. , note. ** see ante, p. , note. *** "shakespeare's works," vol. iii., p. . but what involves the authorship of the sonnets in still { }deeper obscurity is the fact that their publisher, thomas thorpe, himself dedicates them to a friend of his own. he addresses his friend as "mr. w. h.," and signs the dedication with his own initials "t. t." perhaps it was just as the name "shakespeare" was fastened to the title-page of "the passionate pilgrim," and the plays to which, as we shall notice the shakespeareans declare it never belonged, that mr. thomas thorpe calls his book "shakespeare's sonnets, never before imprinted," and makes in the pages of the stationers' company the entry: " may, . tho. thorpe. a book called shake-speare's sonnets." they appear conjointly with a long poem entitled "a lover's complaint," and two of them (as we have said) had already been printed in "the passionate pilgrim," published by jaggard in . this unhappy dedication has been so twisted by the commentators to serve their turns, that the only safety is to print it as it stood in this first edition: "to. the. onlie. begetter. of these. insuing. sonnets. mr. w. h. all. happinesse. and. that. eternetie. promised. by. our. ever. living. poet. wisheth. the. well-wishing. adventurer. in. setting forth. { }for a dedication composed in the turgid fashion of nearly three hundred years ago, the above would seem to be peculiarly intelligible. all publications were ventures in those days. the printer might get his money back and he might not. but, until he did, he was an adventurer. so mr. thorpe, in setting forth on his adventure, wishes well to his publication and to some unknown patron whom he desires--as was the custom--to compliment with wishes of long life and happiness. at least this would seem to be the reading on the face of it. to be sure, there is a slight uncertainty as to whether "mr. w. h." is dedicator or dedicatee. but the moment the name of shakespeare appears this little trouble becomes insignificant--and, as usual, difficulties begin to crowd and multiply. the title reads: "shake-speares sonnets never before imprinted: at london, by g. eld, for t. t. and are to be sold by william apsley. ." at that name the commentators appear, and swarm like eagles around a carcass. mr. armitage brown, who flourished in or about the year , and appears to have been the first gentleman who ever took the trouble to read them, has demonstrated * that these sonnets are actually six poems of different lengths **--each poem having a consistent theme and argument (and he made this discovery by the simple process of reading them). * "shakespeare's autographical poems, being his sonnets clearly developed," etc. by charles armitage brown. london: james bohn, . ** we find, however, that coleridge had earlier advanced the same theory.--table talk (routledge's edition), p. . can any body believe that, if these six poems had been the work of the mighty shakespeare of the shakespear{ }eans, they would have waited until without a reader? and, most wonderful of all, that this mighty poet in his own lifetime would allow six of his poems to be torn up into isolated stanzas by a printer, stirred together and run into type hap-hazard, and sold as his "sonnets?" the shakespeareans tell us sometimes of their william's utter indifference to fame, but they have never claimed for him an imperturbability quite so stolid as this. and while we could not well imagine mr. tennyson regarding with complaisance a publisher who would print his "maud," "locksley hall," "lady clara," etc., each verse standing by itself, and calling the whole "mr. tennyson's sonnets," so we fancy even mr. shakespeare of the globe, had he been their author, would have thought the printers were going a little too far. but, all the same, the shakespeareans, mr. armitage brown among the rest, are determined that these sonnets shall be shakespeare's and nobody else's, and proceed to tell us who "mr. w. h." (to whom mr. thorpe, at william shakespeare's request--as if the the man who wrote the sonnets could not write a dedication of them--dedicated them) is. certain of them believe the letters "w. h." to be a transposition of "h. w.," in which case they might stand for "henry wriothesley," earl of southampton. mr. boaden and two mr. browns * read them, as they stand, to mean william herbert, earl of pembroke (in either case accounting for william shakespeare addressing in earl as "mr."--which may mean "mister" or "mas{ }ter"--on the score of earl and commoner having been the closest of "chums"). * shakespeare's autographical poems." by charles armitage brown. london, . "the sonnets of shakespeare solved," etc. by henry brown. london, . a learned frenchman, m. chasles, has conjectured that thomas thorpe wrote the first half of the dedication, including the "mr. w. h.," and william shakespeare the second half (including, perhaps, though m. chasles does not say so, the "t. t.") one equally learned german (herr bernsdorff) suggests that "w. h." means "william himself," and that the great shakespeare meant to dedicate these poems to his own personality (as george wither, in , dedicated his satirical poems, "g. w. wisheth himself all happiness;") and another supposes shakespeare to have been in love with a negress, "black but comely," like the lady of the canticles. yet another, that this dark lady typified "dramatic art," the roman catholic church, etc., etc. mr. dowden will have it that shakespeare and spenser, and mento that shakespeare and chapman were rivals for the lady's favor. and there have been other and even more puerile speculations put gravely forth by these same learned and venerable commentators: such as, since the word "hewes" (in the line, "a man in hewes all hewes in his controlling"), is spelled with a capital letter, that, therefore, "ay. h." is william hewes (whoever he might have been). wadsworth believes that these sonnets were the repository of the real emotions of william shakespeare, as a relief to long simulation of other people's emotions in his dramas; while mr. william thompson * believes them to be the sonnett, which bacon mentions writ{ }ing in or about , saying: "it happened a little before that time that her majesty had a purpose to dine at twickenham park, at which time i had (though i profess not to be a poet) prepared a _sonnet_, directly tending and alluding to draw on her majesty's reconcilement to my lord, which i remember i also showed to a great person," etc. * the renascence drama, or history made visible. by william thompson, f. r. c. s., f. l. s. melbourne: sands & me- dougal, collins street, west, , p. , et seq. now, mr. thompson believes that this "great person" was william herbert, who read them among the friends of the putative author--was, in short, the "w. h." mr. thompson points out that, if these sonnets are not bacon's _sonnet_, the latter has never been found, among bacon's papers or elsewhere. if these are the sonnets distributed by william shakespeare among his private friends--of which meres seems to have known in --there would be this historical difficulty in connecting them with lord herbert, afterwards earl of pembroke, viz: in the sydney papers * is preserved a letter from rowland white to sir robert sydney, in which the writer says: "my lord herbert hath, with much ado, brought his father to consent that he may live at london, but not before the next spring." this letter is dated april , . "the next spring" would be , the very year in which meres speaks of these sonnets as in existence among william shakespeare's friends. of course, they might have been afterwards collected and dedicated by their author. * vol. ii., p. . but at the time they were so collected, lord herbert was earl pembroke, and was surely not _then_, if he had ever been (which he had { }not), plain "mr. h." in other words, if the sonnets were william shakespeare's, he must either have dedicated them to a stranger--a boy at oxford--or have waited until that hoy had become of age and an earl, and then dedicated them to him in either case by a title not his own. in the absence of explanation., nowadays, we would be obliged to regard such a dedication an insult rather than a compliment. and men were at least no less punctilious about titles in the age of elizabeth than they are to-day. it is interesting, in this connection, to note that in , and while young lord herbert was at oxford, a play, "edward iii.," was entered in the register of the stationers' company. in both this play and in sonnett xciv. occur the line,= ```"lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."= were there _any_ means of ascertaining in which the line is original and in which quotation, it might be of aid in solving this question of authorship. but, unhappily, none are at hand. mr. hiel believes that "w. h." means "william hathaway," shakespeare's brother-in-law, and that "onlie begetter" of these sonnets means "only collector;" (going into considerable philology to make good his assertion), and that hathaway collected his broth-er-in-law's manuscripts and carried them to thorpe. mr. massey has, for his part, constructed a tremendous romance out of the sonnets, * in which "w. h." means { }william herbert, earl of pembroke. * shakespeare's sonnets, never before interpreted. london, . vide, a volume "remarks on the sonnets of shakespeare, showing that they belong to the hermetic class of writings, and explaining their general meaning and purpose." new york: james miller, . printed anonymous, but written by judge e. a. hitchcock. but all these commentators alike agree to ignore the fact that william shakespeare did not dedicate the sonnets to any body, or, so far as we know, procure thomas thorpe to do so for him. a poem, "the phoenix and the turtle," is sometimes bound up with these, described as "verses among the additional poems to love's martyr; or, rosalin's complaint," printed in , but nobody knows by what authority, except that publishers have got into the habit of doing so. then, again, anonymous authorship was a fashionable pastime among the gallants and the gentle of this elizabethan day, and joint authorship a familiar feature in elizabethan letters. it is said that the great dramas we call shakespeare's so persistently nowadays, and which began to appear unheralded at about this time, bear internal traces of courtly and aristocratic authorship. the diction is stately and sedate. no peasant-born author could have assumed and sustained so haughty a contempt for every thing below a baronet (for only at least that grade of humanity--it is said by those who have carefully examined the drama in this view *--does any virtuous or praiseworthy attribute appear in a shakespearean character: while every thing below is exceedingly comic and irresistible, but still "base, common, and popular"). * mr. wilkes' shakespeare from an american point of view. new york: appletons, , if certain noblemen of the court proposed amusing themselves at joint anonymous authorship, they were certainly right in concluding that the name of a living { }man, in their own pay, was a safer disguise than a pseudonym which would challenge curiosity and speculation. at least--so say the new theorists--such has turned out to be the actual fact. it is the new theory that, while in employment in the theater, william shakespeare was approached by certain gentlemen of the court. perhaps their names were southampton, raleigh, essex, rutland, and montgomery, and possibly among them was a needy and ambitious scholar named bacon, who, with an eye to preferment, maintained their society by secret recourse to the jews or to any thing that would put gold for the day in his purse. possibly they desired to be unknown, for the reasons given by miss bacon. in what they asked of him, and what he did for them, he found, at any rate, his profit. the story goes that the amount of profit he realized from one of these gentlemen alone was no less a sum than a thousand pounds. if so--considering the buying power of pounds in those days--it is not so wonderful that, at this rate, william shakespeare retired with a fortune. even at its most and its best, it is an infinitely small percentum of the world's wealth that finds its way into the poet's pocket; poetasters are sometimes luckier than poets. that william shakespeare's fortune came faster than the fortune of his fellows we do know. this was at once the most secure and the most lucrative use he could have made of his name. for, as we have seen, owing to the condition of the common law, while he could hardly have protected himself against any piracy of his name by injunction, he might have loaned it for value to the printers, or to any one desirous of employing it, the { }risk of piracy to be the borrower's. if these noble gentlemen desired to write political philosophy--as miss bacon believed, or belles lettres for their own pleasure--they had their opportunity now; and the new theory is not inconsistent, either with the delia bacon theory or with the baconian theory proper, as elaborated by judge holmes, who recognizes bacon's pen so constantly throughout the dramas. the same difficulties which those theories meet would still confront us if, as mr. boucicault and others have suggested, the plays were offered from lesser sources, and rewritten entirely by william shakespeare; for we should still be obliged to ask, how did he dare to retain in the plays the material which, unintelligible to him, he must have believed to be unintelligible to his audiences, as calculated to drive them away, rather than to attract them? any one of these schemes of assimilated authorship seems at least to tally with the evidence from what we know as the "doubtful plays." in , there appeared in london an anonymous publication--a play entitled "troilus and cressida." it was accompanied by a preface addressed, "a never writer to an ever reader," which, in the turgid fashion of the day, set forth the merit and attractions of the play itself. among its other claims to public favor, this preface asserted the play to be one "never stal'd with the stage, never claperclawed with the palms of the vulgar"--which seems (in english) to mean that it had never been performed in a theater. but, however virgin on its appearance in print, it seems to have very shortly become "staled with the stage," or, at any rate, with a stage name, for, a few months later, { }a second edition of the play (printed from the same type) appears, minus the preface, but with the announcement on the title-page that this is the play of "troilus and cressida, as it was enacted by the king's majesty his servants at the globe. _written by william shakespeare_." * now, unless we can imagine william shakespeare--while operating his theater--writing a play _to be published in print_--and announcing it as entitled to public favor on the ground that it had never been polluted by contact with so unclean and unholy a place as a theater, it is hard to escape the conviction that he was not the "never writer"--in other words, that he was not its author at all--but on its appearance in print, levied on it for his stage, underlined it, produced it, and--it proving a success--either himself announced it, or winked at its announcement by others, as a work of his own. again, in , a play wras printed in london entitled "sir john oldcastle" in , one entitled "the london prodigal" in , one entitled "the yorkshire tragedy" in , one entitled "pericles, prince of tyre;" and, at about the same time, certain others, viz: "the arraignment of paris;" "arden of fever-sham" (a very able work, by the way); "edward iii.;" "the birth of merlin "fair em, the miller's daughter;" "mucedorus;" "the merry devil of edmonton;" "the comedy of george a green;" and "the two noble kinsmen." all the above purported, and were understood to be, and were sold as being, works of william shakespeare, except "the merry devil of edmonton," which was announced as { }by shakespeare and rowley, and "the two noble kinsmen," as by shakespeare and fletcher. * holmes's "authorship of shakespeare," third edition, pp. - . now, it is certainly a fact that william shakespeare, from his box-office at the globe, or from his country-seat at stratford, never corroborated the printers by admitting, or contradicted them by denying his authorship of any of the above enumerated plays. the "hamlet" had been previously published in or about , and the "lucrèce" had made its appearance in . it is certainly a fact that none of these--from "hamlet" to "fair em," from "lucrece" to "the merry devil of edmonton"--did william shakespeare ever either deny or claim as progeny of his. he fathered them all as they came, "and no questions asked." and, had mr. ireland been on hand with his "vortigern," it might have gone in with the rest, with no risk of the scrutiny and the scholarship which exploded it so disastrously in . no plays, bearing the name of william shakespeare on their title-page, now appeared from to . but in the year , seven years after william shakespeare's death, a folio of _thirty-six_ plays is brought out by heminges and condell, entitled "the works of mr. william shakespeare." of the many plays which had appeared during his life, and been circulated and considered as his, or of which mention can (according to the shakes-peareans) be anywhere found, only twenty-six appeared in this folio, while ten plays are included which never appear to have been seen or heard of until their presence in this heminges and condell collection. the shakespeareans allow that this is "mysterious," but precisely the same "mystery" would have been discovered in the days of heminges and condell them{ }selves, if it had been worth the while of anybody then living to look into the question. nothing has happened, since, the death of william shakespeare, to make the shakespeare question any more "mysterious" than he left it himself. to make this apparent at a glance, let us present the whole in a tabulated statement, only asking the reader to observe that we have in every case given the shakespeareans the benefit of the doubt, and accepted the mention of a similar name of any play as proof positive of its being the play nowadays attributed to william shakespeare; and their own chronology everywhere. the following table shows the plays passing as william shakespeare's, in london, in the years when he resided in london, as part proprietor and concerned in the management of the globe and blackfriars theaters; the dates of their earliest mention or appearance, and which of them were included in the first folio, edited by heminges and condell, in : on the supposition that the plays mentioned by meres (of which, however, no other traces can be found, during william shakespeare's life), besides those names in manningham's and forman's diaries, and the "account of the levels at court," are the identical plays now included in the shakespearean drama. the dates are mr. grant white's. { } [illustration: ] * this play is put in between the histories and tragedies, as if received "too late for classification," as the newspapers say. its pages are not numbered, and so it does not disturb the pagination of the folio. part vi.--the new theory, { }a play called "duke humphrey," attributed to shakespeare, was amongst the dramatic manuscripts destroyed by the carelessness of warburton's servant, in the early part of the last century, as appears by the list preserved in the british museum--ms. lans-downe, . leaving out these plays mentioned by meres, we then have twenty-one entirely new plays, which never appeared in william shakespeare's life, first appearing in heminges and condell's edition. it appearing, then, that, of some forty-two plays credited to william shakespeare during his lifetime, heminges and condell selected only twenty-five, and printed and hound up with those twenty-five nine plays which nobody had ever heard of in print or on the stage or anywhere else, until william shakespeare had been dead and in his grave seven years, besides the "othello," which was first heard of five years after his death: it follows either that heminges and condell knew that william shakespeare was in the habit of allowing plays to be called by his name which he never wrote, or that heminges and condell's collection of "mr. william shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies, published according to the true original copies," is nothing more or less than a collection of plays written prior to the year , and not earlier than the reign of elizabeth. the shakes-peareans may take either horn of the dilemma they please. "pericles," one of the plays rejected by heminges and condell has since been restored to favor, and no editor now omits it. surely, under the circumstances, we are justified in asking the question: "if william shakespeare ever wrote any plays or { }poems, which of the above did he write, and which are 'doubtful? " 'whether the hand that wrote the "hamlet" also composed the "fair em;" or the classicist who produced the "julius cæsar" and the "coriolanus" at about the same time achieved "the merry devil" and "the london prodigal," is a question lying within that sacred, peculiar realm of "criticism" which has "established" and forever "proved" so many wonderful things about "our shakespeare"--a realm beyond our purview in these papers, and wherein we should be a trespasser. fortunately, however, the question has been settled for us by those to whom criticism is not ultra vies, and may safely be said to be at rest now and forever. the burden of the judgment of the whole critical world is of record that the only true canon of "william shakespeare" consists of the plays first brought together in one book by heminges and condell, plus the "pericles;" and that certain of the above-mentioned plays, known to have been published under the name of william shakespeare are "spurious;" that, during the lifetime of william shakespeare, and in the city where he dwelt--under his very nose, that is to say--divers and sundry plays did appear from time to time which he did not write, but which he fathered. whether, in pure philanthrophy and charity, he regarded these as little japhets in search of a father, and so, pitying their abandoned and derelict condition, assumed their paternity, or, whether he took advantage of their bastardy for mere selfish and ill-gotten gain, the critical world find it unprofitable to speculate. but there can be no reasonable doubt that, in london in { }the days of elizabeth, in the name of "william shakespeare" there was much the same sort of common trade-mark as exists, in cologne, in the days of victoria, in the name "jean maria farina"--that it was at everybody's service. and if william shakespeare farmed ont his name to playwrights, just as the only original farina farms out his to makers of the delectable water of cologne, wherein shall we find fault? if, two hundred years after, a lesser sir walter of abbotsford, be acquitted of moral obliquity in denying his fatherhood of "waverly," for the sake of the offspring, surely the elastic ethics of authorship, for the sale of the great book, will stretch out far enough to cover the case of a shakespeare, who neither affirmed nor denied, but only held his peace! william shakespeare, at least in the days when lord coke lays that a play-actor was, in contemplation of law, a vagabond and a tramp, * never had to shift for his living. he always had money to spend, and money to lend, in the days when we know many of his contemporaries in the theatrical and dramatic line were "in continued and utter extremity, willing to barter exertion, name, and fame for the daily dole that gets the daily dinner. ** of all the co-managers--and, among them, one burbage was the booth or forrest of his day--william shakespeare is the only one whose pecuniary success enables him to retire to become a landed gentleman with a purchased "esquire" to his name. * "the fatal end," he says, "of these fire is beggary--the alchiemyst, the monopotext, the concealer, the informer, and the poetaster." a "play-actor," he elsewhere affirms, was a fit subject for the grand jury, as a "vagrant." ** "chambers's edinburgh journal," august , . p. . { }no wonder robert greene, a well-known contemporary actor, but "who led the skeltering life peculiar to his trade! and who had either divined or shared the secret of the "shakespearean" dramas, raised his voice in warning of the masquerade in borrowed plumes! was william shakespeare a shrewd masquerader, who covered his tracks so well that the search for a fragment of shakespearean manuscript or holograph, which has been as thorough and ardent as ever was search for the philosopher's stone, has been unable to unearth them? certainly no scrap or morsel has been found. the explanation of all this mystery, according to the new theory, is of very little value, except in so far as it throws light upon what otherwise seems inexplicable, namely, that these magnificent philosophical dramas (which are more precious in our libraries as text-book and poems than as stage shows wherewith to pass an idle evening in our enlightened day) should have been popular with the coarse audiences of the times from which they date. rut, if, to conceal their real authors, these magnificent productions were simply sent out under a name that was at every body's disposal, the discovery is of exceeding interest. from the lofty masterpiece of the "hamlet" to what m. taine calls "a debauch of imagination... which no fair and frail dame in london should be without" *--the "venus and adonis"--it was immaterial what they printed as his, so this william shakespeare earned his fee for his silence. as for young southampton--then just turned of nineteen--his part in the covert work of the { }junta might, and, indeed, seems to have been, the accepting of the famous dedication. * crawley, quoted by taine, "english literature," book ii., chapter iv. that a rustic butcher-lad should, while holding horses at the door of a city theater, produce as "the first heir of his invention"--the very first thing he turned his pen to--so maturely voluptuous a poem as the "venus and adonis," would be a miracle, among all the other miracles, not to be lost sight of. we believe that historical and circumstantial evidence alone is adequate to settle or even to disturb this shakespearean question; for it appears to be the unanimous verdict of criticism that the style of bacon and the style of "shakespeare" are as far apart as the poles. experts have even gone so far as to reduce both to a "euphonic test," * and pronounce it impossible that the two could have been written by the same hand. but this is not very valuable as evidence; for never, we think, can mere expert evidence be of itself sufficient as to questions of forgery of authorship any more than of autograph. if mere literary style had been all the evidence accessible, our shakespeareans would have been making oath to the ireland forgeries to-day as stoutly as when, in the simplicity of their hearts, they swore the impromptus of a boy of eighteen surpassed any thing in "hamlet" or holy writ. even mr. spedding, who ignores any "baconian theory," in writing the life of bacon, admits that whenever a literary doubt has to be decided by the test of style, "the reader must be allowed to judge for himself." * wilkes's "shakespeare from an american point of view," part iii. it was only by just such circumstantial evidence as has been grouped in these papers (such as the { }elizabethan orthography and philology--the use of roman instead of arabic numerals! etc.) that the ireland imposture was exploded. forgery is the imitation of an original, and, if the original be inimitable, there can surely be no forgery. in the case of forgery of a signature, lawyers and experts know that the nearer the imitation, the more easy is it detectable; for no man writes his own name twice precisely alike, and, if two signatures attributed to the same hand are found to be _fac similes_, and, on being superimposed against the light, match each other in every detail, it is irrefutable evidence that one is intentionally simulated. * in the case of literary style, however, we are deprived of this safeguard, because, the more nearly exact the counterfeit, the more easily the critic is deceived. pope was not afraid to entrust whole sections of the paraphrase he called the "odyssy of homer," just as michael angelo did his frescoes, to journey-workmen--and not a critic has ever been able to pronounce, or even guess, which was pope and which was pope's apprentice; and not only the chatterton, ireland, and macpherson forgeries, but the history of merely sportive imitation and parody prove that literary style is any thing but inimitable; that, in fact, it requires no genius, and very little cleverness to counterfeit it. ** nor is--what is incessantly appealed { }to--"the internal evidence of the plays themselves" of any particular value to the end in view. * hunt versus lawless, new york superior court, november, . and see, also, moore versus united states, otto, united states, . criminal law journal, jersey city, n. j., march, . arty "calligraphy and the whittaker case." ** the curious reader is referred to "supercheries literaries, pastiches, etc.," one of the unique labors of the late m. delapierre. london, trubner & co., . were the question before us, "was the author of these works a poet, statesman, philosopher, lawyer?" etc., etc., this internal evidence would be, indeed, invaluable. but it is not. the question is not _what_, but _who_, was the author. was his family name "shakespeare," and was he christened "william"? the shakespearean has been allowed to confound these questions, and to answer them together, until they have become as inseparable as demosthenes and his pebble-stones. but, once separated, it is manifest that the internal evidence drawn from the works themselves, however satisfactory as to the one question, is utterly incompetent as to the other, and that it is by purely external--that is to say, by circumstantial evidence, by history, and by the record--that the question before us must be answered, if, indeed, it ever is to be answered at all. and, therefore, it is by circumstantial evidence alone, we think, that literary imposture can be satisfactorily exposed. neither can we trust to internal evidence alone; for an attempt to write the biography of william shakespeare by means of the internal evidence of the shakespearean plays, has inevitably resulted in the questions we have already encountered. was shakespeare a lawyer, was shakespeare a physician--a natural philosopher--a chemist--a botanist--a classical scholar--a student of contemporary life and manners--an historian--a courtier--an aristocrat--a biblicist--a journeyman printer, and the rest!--and in giving us the fairy stories of mr. knight and mr. de quincy in place of the truth we crave. for we can not close our eyes to the fact that history very decid{ }edly negatives the idea that william shakespeare, of stratford, was either a lawyer, a physician, a courtier, a philosopher, an aristocrat, or a soldier. moreover, while the internal evidence is fatal to the shakespearean theory, it preponderates in favor of the baconians: for, when we should ask these questions concerning francis bacon, surely the answer of history would be, yes--yes, indeed; all this was francis bacon. the minute induction of his new and vast philosophy did not neglect the analysis of the meanest herb or the humblest fragment of experimental truth that could minister to the comfort or the health of man. and where else, in the range of letters--except in the shakespearean works, where kings and clowns alike take their figures of speech from the analogies of nature--is the parallel of all this faithful accumulation of detail and counterfeit handwriting of nature? the great ex-chancellor had stooped to watch even the "red-hipped bumble-bee" and the "small gray-coated gnat." had the busy manager been studying them as well? his last act on earth was to alight from his carriage to gather handfuls of snow, to ascertain if snow could be utilized to prevent decomposition of dead flesh; and it is related that, in his dying moments--for the very act precipitated the fever of which he died--he did not forget, to record that the experiment had succeeded "excellently well." from these to lordly music, * and in all the range between, no science had escaped francis bacon. had the busy { }manager followed or preceded the philosopher's footsteps, step by step, up through them all? * ulrici, p. , book ii, chapter vi., refers to "two gentlemen of verona," act , sc. . as proving that the author of that play "possessed in an unusual degree the power of judging and understanding the theory of music." and did he pause in his conception or adaptation of a play, pen in hand, to take a trip to italy, or a run-up into scotland to get the name of a hostelry or the topography of a highway, to make it an encyclopaedia as well as a play as he went along? if the manager alone was the author of these works, there is, we have seen, no refuge from this conviction. but, if, as is the new theory, those plays were amplified for the press by a learned hand, perhaps, after all, he was the stage manager, actor, and human being that history asserts him to have been. if, as has been conjectured, william shakespeare sketched the clowns and wenches with which these stately dramas are relieved, it would account for the supposed warwickshire source of many of them. and if william shakespeare was pretty familiar with the constabulary along his route between home and theater, so often traveled by himself and jolly coetaneans with heads full of marian hackett's ale, and thought some of them good enough to put into a play, his judgment has received the approval of many audiences beside those of the bankside and blackfriars. the shakespearean plays, as now performed in our theaters, are the editions of cibber, garrick, kemble, kean, macready, booth, irving, and others, and, while preserving still the dialogues which passed, perhaps, through shakespeare's hands, retain no traces of his industry, once so valuable to the globe and blackfriars, but now rejected as unsuited to the exigencies of the modern stage, the "business" inserted in them by william shakespeare's editorship has long since been rejected. little as there is of the man of { }stratford in our libraries, there is still less of him in our theaters in . but the world still retains the honest dogberry, who lived at grendon, in bucks, on the road from london to stratfordtown, and doubtless many more of the witty manager's master strokes. at least, the "new theory" and the "delia bacon theory" coincide in this, that william shakespeare was fortunate in the manuscripts brought to him, and grew rich in making plays out of them and matching them to his spectacles. such, briefly sketched, are the theories concerning these glorious transcripts of the age of elizabeth, which, while two centuries of literature between is obsolete and moribund, are yet unwithered and unstaled, and the most priceless of all the treasuries of the age of victoria. and yet, there seems to be a feeling that any exploration after their authorship is a sacrilege, and that this particular historical question must be left untouched--as pythagoras would not eat beans, as parricidal--that william shakespeare is william shakespeare--and the doggerel curse of stratford hangs over and forefends the meddling with his bones. but no witch's palindrome for long can block the march of reason and of research. modern scholarship is every day dissolving chimera, and, if this shakespeare story has no basis of truth, it must inevitably be abolished along with the rest. if this transcendent literature had come down to us without the name, would it have been sacrilege to search for its paternity? and does the mere name of william shakespeare make that, which is otherwise expedient, infamous? { }or, is this the meaning of the incantation on the tomb--that cursed shall he be that seeks to penetrate the secret of the plays? such, indeed, was the belief that drove poor delia bacon mad. but we decline to see any thing but the calm historical question. it seems to us that, if we are at liberty to dispute as much as we like as to whether two a's or only one, or three e's or only two belong of right in the name "shakespeare," surely it can not be debarred us to ask of the past the origin of the thousand-souled pages we call by that name. we believe that, if the existence of these three theories--as to each of which it is possible to say so much--proves any thing, it proves that history and circumstantial evidence oppose the possibility of william shakespeare's authorship of the works called his, and that there is a reasonable doubt as to whether any one man did write, or could have written, either with or without a bodleian or an astor library at his elbow, the whole complete canon of the shakespearean works. but is there not a refuge from all these more or less conflicting theories in the simple canon that human experience is a safer guide than conjecture or miracle? in our own day, the astute manager draws from bushels of manuscript plays, submitted to him by ambitious amateurs or plodding playwrights, the few morsels he deems worthy of his stage, and, restringing them on a thread of his own, or another's, presents the result to his audiences. can we imagine a reason why the same process should have been improbable in the days of elizabeth and james? and if among these amateurs and playwrights there happened to be the same proportion of lawyers, courtiers, politicians, { }soldiers, musicians, physicians, naturalists, botanists, and the rest (as well as contributions from the hundreds of learned clerks whom the disestablishment of the monasteries had driven to their wits for support), that we would be likely to find among the corresponding class to-day, it would surely be a less violent explanation of "the myriad-minded shakespeare," than to conjecture the "shakespeare" springing, without an interval for preparation, at once into the finished crown and acme of each and all of these. in fact, is it not william shakespeare the editor, and not the author, to whom our veneration and gratitude is due? it almost seems as if not only the skepticism of the doubter but the criticism of scholarship has all along tended irresistibly to accept this compromise, as all criticism must eventually coincide with history, if it be criticism at all. the closest examination of the shakespearean plays has revealed to scholars traces of more than one hand. it is past a hundred years since theobald declared that, "though there are several master strokes in these three plays (viz.: the three parts of 'king henry vi.'), yet i am almost doubtful whether they were entirely of his (shakespeare's) writing. and unless they were wrote by him very early, i should rather imagine them to have been brought to him as a director of the stage, and so have received some finishing beauties at his hands. an accurate observer will easily see the diction of them is more obsolete, and the numbers more mean and prosaical than in the generality of his genuine composition." * * theobald's shakespeare ( ). vol. iv., p. . we have elsewhere shown { }that farmer stumbled upon the same difficulty. malone "wrote a long dissertation," says mr. grant white, "to show that the three parts of 'king henry vi.' were not shakespeare's, but had only been altered and enriched by him; and that the first 'part' was written by another person than the author of the second and third."* drake proposed that the "first part of 'king henry vi.' be excluded from future editions of shakespeare's works, because it offers no trace of any finishing strokes from the master bard." ** "it remains to inquire," says hallam (after a discussion of these plays, which he says shakespeare remodeled from two old plays "in great part marlowe, though greene seems to have put in for some share in their composition"), "who are to claim the credit of these other plays, so great a portion of which has passed with the world for the genuine work of shakespeare." *** and again, what share he (shakespeare) may have had in similar repairs of the many plays he represented, can not be determined. **** and dyee, halliwell, and all the others follow mr. hallam (whose authority' is greene's well-known complaint about the "johannes factotum, who struts about with his tyger's heart wrapped in a player's hide;" *v which allusion to a line in the third part of henry the sixth, locates the particular "steal" which greene had most at heart when he complained). * an essay on the authorship of the three parts of king henry the sixth. by richard grant white. riverside press. h. o. houghton & go., cambridge, mass., . ** shakespeare and his times. vol. ii., p. . *** note to hallam's literature of europe. part ii., chap, vi., § . **** id., § . *v "o, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide."--iii. hen. vi. last of all comes mr. { }grant white, a most profound believer in shakespeare, and all that name implies! with "an essay on the authorship of the three parts of king henry the sixth," * to prove that william shakespeare, in plagiarizing from the earlier tragedies, only plagiarized from himself, he himself having really written all that was worth saving in them! mr. white labors considerably to fix the exact date at which marlowe, peale and greene--the most eminent play writers of the day--employed a raw stratford youth, just truanting in london, to kindly run over, prune, and perfect their manuscripts for them, and to clear mr. white's shakespeare from the stigma of what, if true, mr. white admits to have been a "want of probity on shakespeare's part, accompanied by a hardly less culpable indifference on the part of his fellows." ** this "indifference" can not be charged to one sufferer, at least, robert greene, who was not silent when he saw his work unblushingly appropriated: thus giving us assurance of one occasion, at least, upon which william shakespeare posed as editor instead of author. at any rate, we have seen the circumstantial evidence has been corroborated by the experts (for so, to borrow a figure, let us call them) aubrey, cartwright, digges, denham, fuller, *** and ben jonson. * cambridge, mass.: h. o. houghton & co. riverside press, ** id, p. . *** see the quotation from his "worthies of england," in the foot-note, ante, this chapter. all these assure us (ben jonson twice, once in writing and once in conversation) that william shakespeare was a nat{ }ural wit--a wag in the crude--but that he wanted art. old dominie ward made a note "to read shakespeare's plays to post him," but even he had heard that he was a wit, but that he wanted art. * this testimony may not compel conviction, but it is all we have; we must take it, or go without any testimony at all. at any rate, it sustains and is sustained by the circumstances, and these seven different witnesses, at least, testify, without procurement, collusion, or knowledge of the use to be made of their testimony, and opposed to them all is only the little elegiac rhyme by one of themselves:= ```"yet must i not give nature all thy art, ```my gentle shakespeare must enjoy a part."= only one single scrap of mortuary effusion on which to hang the fame of centuries! and if we exclude the circumstantial evidence and the expert testimony as false, and admit the one little rhyme as true, then our reason, judgment, and inner consciousness must accept as the author of the learned, laborious, accurate, eloquent, and majestic sheakespearean pages, a wag--a funny fellow whose "wit (to quote jonson again) was in his own power," but not "the rule of it," so much so, "that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." * ante, page . surely it is a much less violent supposition that this funny mr. shakespeare--who happened to be employed in the theater where certain masterpieces were taken to be cut up into plays to copy out of them each actor's parts--that this waggish penman, as he wrote out the parts in big, round hand, improved on or interpolated a palpable hit, a merry speech, the { }last popular song, or sketched entire a role with a name familiar to his boyish ear--the village butt, or sot, or justice of the peace, * may he; or, why not some fellow scapegrace of olden times by avon banks? he did it with a swift touch and a mellow humor that relieved and refreshed the stately speeches, making the play all the more available and the copyist all the more valuable to the management. but, all the same, how this witty mr. shakespeare would have roared at a suggestion that the centuries after him should christen by his--the copyist's--name all the might and majesty and splendor, all the philosophy and pathos and poetry, every word that he wrote out, unblotting a line, for the players! * he had not failed to see dogberry and shallow in the little villages of warwickshire--and the wonderful "watch." the "watch" of those days was indeed something to wonder at. in a letter of lord burleigh to sir francis walsingham, written in , the writer says that he once saw certain of them standing "so openly in pumps" in a public place, that "no suspected person would come nigh them;" and, on his asking them what they stood there for, they answered that they were put there to apprehend three men, the only description they had of them was that one of them had a hooked nose. "if they be no better instructed but to find three persons by one of them having a hooked nose, they may miss thereof," reflects burghley, with much reason. mr. halliwell phillips, in his "outline of the life of william shakespeare" (brighton, ), page , thinks that this is unlikely, because the magistrate mentioned by aubrey would have been too old in , if he had been the model sought. it must be conceded, say the new theorists: i. that the plays, whether in the shape we now have them or not, are, at least, under the same { }names and with substantially the same dramatis personæ. ii. that william shakespeare was the stage manager, or stage editor; or, at any rate, touched up the plays for representation. iii. that the acting copies of the plays, put into the hands of the players to learn their parts from, were more or less in the handwriting of william shakespeare, and that from these acting copies the first folio of was set up and printed. at least, the best evidence at hand seems to establish all three of these propositions. this evidence is meager and accidental, but, for that very reason, involuntary, and, therefore, not manufactured; and it establishes the above propositions, as far as it goes, as follows: i. in a volume, "poste, with a racket of madde-letters," printed in , a young woman is made to say to her lover: "it is not your liustie rustie can make me afraide of your big lookes, for i saw the plaie of ancient pistoll, where a craking coward was well cudgelled for his knavery; your railing is so near the rascall that i am almost ashamed to bestow so good a name as the rogue upon you." again, sharpham, in his "fleire," printed in , has this piece of dialogue: "_kni_.--and how lives he with 'am? "_fie_.--faith, like this be in the play, a' has almost killed himselfe with the scabbard!" the first author thus makes his young woman to have seen henry v., and the second alludes to the midsummer-night's dream, where the bumpkin is made to kill himself by falling on his { }scabbard instead of his sword. besides, in the imperfect versions of the plays which the printers were able to make up, from such unauthorized sources as best served them, it is thought that there are unmistakable evidences that one of the sources was the shorthand of a listener, who, not catching a word or phrase distinctly, would put down something that sounded enough like it to betray the sources and his copy. for example: in the spring of , a play called "the revenge of hamlet, prince of denmark." was presented at the globe theater. in , two booksellers, ling and trundell, printed a play of that title, put william shakespeare's name to it, and sold it. now, in this version, we have such errors as "right done" for "write down" (act i., scene ii.); "invenom'd speech" for "in venom steeped" (act i., scene i.); "i'll provide for you a grave" for "most secret and most grave" (act iii, scene iv.); "a beast devoid of reason" for "a beast that wants discourse of reason," and the like. ling and trundell, somehow or other, procured better copy, and printed a corrected edition in the following year; but the errors in their first edition were precisely such as would result from an attempt to report the play phonetically, as it was delivered by the actors on the stage. all the printers of the day seem to have made common piracy out of these plays, impelled thereto by their exceeding popularity. hash says that the first part of king henry vi., especially, had a wonderful run for those days, being witnessed by at least ten thousand people. * * we take all these references from "outlines of the life of shakespeare," by i. o. halliwell phillips (brighton. printed for the author's friends, for presents only. ), page , to which capital volume we acknowledge our exceeding obligation. mr. grant white in the atlantic monthly, october , believes that he is able to trace the surreptitious "copy" of this first hamlet to the actor who took the part of voltimand. the inference from mr. white's account of the transaction, is precisely that we have noted in the text. of { }this play a garbled version was put on the market by millington, who, soon after, did the same thing by the henry v. ii. davenant instructed betterton how to render the part of henry viii., assuring him that he (davenant) had his own instructions from lowin, and that lowin got them from william shakespeare in person. * (we have not accepted davenant's evidence as likely to be of much value, when assuming to be shakespeare's son, successor, literary executor, and the like, but this does not appear, on its face, improbable, and is no particular less if untrue.) ravens-croft, who re-wrote titus andronicus in , says, in his preface: "i have been told by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it (this play) was not originally his (shakespeare's), but brought by a private actor to be acted, and he only gave some master touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." ** "i am assured," says gildon, *** "from very good hands, that the person that acted iago was in much esteem as a comedian, which made shakespeare put several words and expressions into his part, perhaps not so agreeable to his character, to make the audience laugh, who had not yet learned to endure to be serious a whole play." * id. ** id. *** reflections on rymer's "short view of tragedy," quoted by mr. halliwell phillips, in his work cited in last note. (but if shakespeare put them in to "catch the ear of the groundlings," who took { }them out again for the folio of ? the baconians would probably ask: "did bacon, after shakespeare was dead?" and it could not have been a proofreader; for, if there was any proof-reader, he was the most careless one that ever lived. the folio of is crowded with typographical errors.) somebody--necessarily shakespeare--was in the habit of introducing into these shakespearean plays the popular songs of the day. for example, the song, "a lover and his lass," in "as you like it." was written by thomas morley, and printed in his "first book of ayres; or, little short songs," in . * and the ballad, "farewell, dear love," in "twelfth night," has previously appeared in , in the "book of ayres" of robert jones. ** it is probable, however, says mr. halliwell phillips, that william shakespeare had withdrawn from the management of the globe; at the date of its destruction during the performance of henry viii. (which mr. phillips calls the first play on the english stage in which dramatic art was sacrificed to stage effect. it is curious, this being the case, to find the new shakespeare society rejecting the henry viii. as not shakespearean on the philological evidence, and assuring us that wolsey's soliloquy is not shakespeare's, as did mr. spedding so many years before). * in the last issue of the "transactions of the new shakespeare society" is a copy of what purports to be a manuscript respecting the delivery of certain red cloth to shakespeare, on the occasion of a reception to james i., by the corporation of london, in , unearthed and guaranteed by mr. furnivall. ** folio, london, . the story of queen elizabeth's order for "falstaff in love" first appeared, in , in the { }preface to john dennis's "comicale gallant," from whom rowe quoted. although smacking of the same flavor as the southampton and king james "yarns"--it is worth noting that this story may possess, perhaps, some vestige of foundation. if these sounding plays, so full of religion, politics, philosophy, and statecraft, were presented at shakespeare's theater, it is only natural that it should come to elizabeth's ears. the lion queen did not care to have her subjects instructed too far. she liked to keep them well in hand, and was only--she and her ministers--too ready to "snuff treason in certain things that went by other's names." the run of comedies at other theaters were harmless enough (an adultery for a plot, and an unsuspecting husband for a butt. this was a comedy; plus a little blood, it was a tragedy). let the people have their fill of amusement, but it is better not to meddle with philosophy and politics. so there are things more unlikely to have happened than that elizabeth, through her lord chamberlain, should have intimated to manager shakespeare to give them something more in the run and appetite of the day. * the "merry wives of windsor" was, in due time, underlined. but, somehow or other, it was with a would-be adulterer, rather than an injured husband, for a butt; and, somehow or other, galen and esculapius and epicurius had intruded where there was no need of them. * collier--"lives of shakespeare's actors, introduction, page xv."--says that there were at least two, and perhaps three, other william shakespeares in london in these days. the salaciousness elizabeth wanted (if the story is true) was all there, as well as the transformation scene; but, at the end, there is a re{ }buke to lechery and to lecherous minds that is not equivocal in its terms. * but that any of this shakespeare fortune came, by way of gift or otherwise, from southampton, there is no ground, except silly and baseless rumor, for believing. if southampton had been the rothschild of his time--which he was very far from being--he would not have given a thousand pounds (a sum we have estimated as equaling $ , to-day, but which mr. grant white puts at $ , , and which mr. halliwell phillips, ** on account of the "often fictitious importance attached to cash, arising from its comparative scarcity in those days," says ought even be as high as twelve pounds for one) to a casual acquaintance. the mere passing of such a sum would seem to involve other relations; and if southampton knew shakespeare, or shakespeare southampton, let it be demonstrated from some autobiographical or historical source--from some other source than the "biographies of william shakespeare," written by those slippery rhapsodists, the shakespereans. if damon and pythias were friends, let it appear from the biographies of damon, as well as from the biographies of pythias. let us find it in some of southampton's papers, or in the archives or papers of some of his family, descendants, contemporaries, or acquaintances; in the chronicles of elizabeth, raleigh, cecil, essex, rutland, montgomery, camden, coke, bacon, tobie mathew, ben jonson, or of somebody alive and with open eyes in london { }at about that date, before we yield it historical assent, and make oath to it so solemnly. * perhaps, if the story were true, a rebuke to elizabeth personally in the line (act v., scene v.), "our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery." as a matter of fact, and as the industrious mr. lodge confesses, * there is no such trace or record. except from, the "biographers" of shakespeare, no note, hint, or surmise, connecting the two names, can be anywhere unearthed, and they only draw the suggestion on which they build such lofty treatises from a dedication printed in the days when printers helped themselves to any name they wanted without fear of an injunction out of chancery. that any sonnets were ever dedicated to southampton by anybody, is, we have seen, pure invention. iii. but that the famous first folio of was set up from piecemeal parts written for separate actors, and that these were in william shakespeare's handwriting, there seems to be contemporary circumstantial evidence. we have seen that, although ben jonson has, for two hundred and fifty years, been believed when he said in poetry that william shakespeare was not only the "star of poets" for genius, but that besides he would "sweat and strike the second heat upon the muses's anvil;" when he said in prose that "the players often mentioned it as an honor to shakespeare that in writing (whatever he wrote) he never blotted out a line," he was supposed to be using a mere figure of speech. but it seems that he was telling the truth. for, in --shakespeare having been dead seven years--heminges and condell--two "players" (i. e., { }actors), and the same that shakespeare in his will calls his "fellows"--publish the first edition of the plays we now call "shakespeare"--and, on the title-page of that edition, advertise them as "published according to the _true original copies_." * portraits, henry wreothlesey, earl of southampton, yol. iii., page . bohn's edition. further on in their preface, they repeat, almost in his very words, ben jon-son's statement, asserting that "we have scarce received from him (william shakespeare) a blot in his papers." what papers? what indeed, but "the true original copies" of these plays which were in william shakespeare's handwriting? what else could it have been that "the players" (according to ben jonson) saw? does anybody suppose that the poet's own first draft, untouched of the file and unperfumed of the lamp, went into "the players'" hands, for them to learn their parts from? and, even if _one_ player was allowed to study his part from the inspired author's first draft, his fellow "players" must have taken or received a copy or copies of their parts; they could not all study their parts from the same manuscript. the only reasonable supposition, therefore, is, that william shakespeare made it part of his duties at the theater to _write out_ in a fair hand the parts for the different "players" (and no wonder they mentioned it, as "an honor" to him, that he lightened their labors considerably by the legibility of his penmanship, by never blotting out a line) and that, in course of time, these "true original copies" were collected from their fellow-actors by heminges and condell, and by them published; they remarking, in turn, upon the excellence of the penmanship so familiar to them. there is only wanted to confirm this supposition, a piece of { }actual evidence as to what heminges and condell _did_ print from. now, it happens that, by their own careless proof reading, heminges and condell have actually supplied this piece of missing circumstantial evidence, as follows: naturally, in these true original copies of a particular actors part, the name of the actor assuming that part would be written in the margin, opposite to or instead of the name of the character he was to personate; precisely as is done to-day by the theater copyist in copying parts for distribution among the company. it happened that, in setting up the types for this first edition from these fragmentary actors' copies, the printers would often accidentaly, from following "copy" too closely, set up these real names of the actors instead of the names of the characters. and--as any one taking up a copy or fac-simile of this famous "first folio" can see for himself--the editors carelessly overlooked these errors in the proof, and there they remain to this day: "jacke wilson," for "balthazar," "andrew" and "cowley," for "dogberry;" "kempe," for "verges," and the like--the names of shakespeare's actors--instead of the parts they took in the piece. it seems superfluous to again suggest that these unblotted "copies" could not have been the author's first draft of a play, or that an author does not write his compositions in manifold, or that there had been many actors to learn their parts in the course of from sixteen to twenty years. besides--even if heminges and condell had not told us--it would have still been perfectly evident, from an inspection of the "first folio," that the "copy" it was set up from was never completely in their hands, but { }was collected piecemeal during the manufacture. for instance, we see where the printers left a space of twenty-nine pages, between "romeo and juliet" and "julius cæsar," in which to print the "timon of athens." but all the copy they could find of the "timon" only made _eighteen_ pages, and so--by huge "head pieces" and "tail pieces," and a "table of the actor's names" (given in no other instance) in coarse capitals--they eked out the "signature;" and, by omitting the whole of the next "signature," carried the pagination over from " " to " ." the copy for "troilus and cres-sida" seems not to have been received until the volume was in the binder's hands (which is remarkable, too, for that play had been in print for fourteen years). the play is not mentioned in the table of contents, but is tucked in without paging (except that the first five pages are numbered , , , , , whereas the paging of the volume had already reached ). "troilus and cressida," thus printed, fills two "signatures" lacking one page, and so somebody at hand wrote a "prologue" in rhyme--setting out the argument--to save the blank page, and the like. whatever "papers" heminges and condell "received from william shakespeare then, were fair, unblotted copies of the actor parts, made by him for their use. it appears then, that--minute scholarship and the records apart--the foreman of a printing-house would have been at any time in the past two hundred and fifty years, without assistance from the commentators, able to settle the great shakespearean authorship controversy. while--from one standpoint--this testimony of the types is strong circumstantial evidence against { }the baconian theory, taken from another standpoint it is quite as strongly corroborative. for on the one hand, bacon was alive when this folio was printed, and the man who rewrote his essays eleven times would scarcely have allowed his plays to go to the public so shiftlessly printed. but on the other hand, if the book was printed without consulting him, that insurmountable barrier--the fact that bacon never claimed these plays--is swept away at once. we have simply to assume that he always intended, at some convenient season, to acknowledge them: that he was not satisfied with them as they appeared in the heminges and condell edition, and proposed revising them himself before claiming them, (we know how difficult he found it to satisfy his own censorship) or that he purposed completing the series, (for which the sketch of the henry vii may have been placed among his private memoranda) at his leisure. we have then only to imagine that death overtook him suddenly (his death was sudden) before this programme had been completed, and his not acknowledging them; not leaving them--incomplete as he believed them--to "the next ages," was characteristic of the man. "if i go, who remains? if i remain, who goes?" said dante to the council of florence. take the shakespearean pages away from english literature, and what remains? detain them, and what departs? and yet are men to believe that the writer of these pages left no impress on the history of his age and no item in the chronicle of his time? that, in the intensest focus of the clear, calm, electric-light of nineteenth century inspection and investigation, their author { }stands only revealed in the gossip of goodwives or the drivel of a pot-house clientage? who is it--his reason and judgment once enlisted--who believes this thing? columbus discovered the continent we call after the name of another. where shall we find written the names of the genii whose fruit and fame this shakespeare has stolen. having lost "our shakespeare" both to-day and forever, it will doubtless remain--as it is--the question, "who wrote the shakespearean dramas?" the evidence is all in--the testimony is all taken. perhaps it is a secret that even time will never tell, that is hidden deep down in the crypt and sacristy of the past, whose seal shall never more be broken. in the wise land of china it is said that when a man has deserved well of the state, his countrymen honor, with houses and lands and gifts and decorations, not himself, but his father and his mother. perhaps, learning a lesson from the celestials; we might rear a shaft to the fathers and the mothers of the immortality that wrote the book of nature, the mighty book which "age can not wither, nor custom stale" and whose infinite variety for three centuries has been and, until time shall be no more, will be close to the hearts of every age and cycle of men--household words for ever and ever, the book--thank heaven!--that nothing can divorce from us. the end. index a. actors, names of shakespeare, printed by mistake in first folio, . actors, fellows of w. s. did they suspect imposition? . of shakespeare's day, expected to improvise, . actresses, none in shakespeare's day, . addison, joseph, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . alterations of the plays in st folio. see emendations. althea, classical error as to, . angling, knowledge of, displayed in plays, . anonymous authorship, . or pseudonymic, fashionable in those days, . anti-shakespearean theories-- a compromise of, suggested, . theobald anticipates, . areopagitica, milton's, first asserted author's rights, . aristotle, bacon and shakespeare misquote passage of, . arms, john shakespeare's, purchased by his son, . coat of, "cut from whole cloth," . obtained by falsehood, - , note. protest against them, , note. purchased with shakespeare's first earnings, . why shakespeare purchased, . article in chambers' journal first raises authorship question, . aubrey, his testimony, , - . expert evidence of, - . audiences. see plays. did not want scientific treatises, . formative days of, . not critical, . the shakespearean, - . author, his interest to be anonymous, . eights, what were, . compensation, how obtained, . author of the plays. see plays. his fidelity to national characteristics, . insight of, into the human heart, no guess work, . of text, did not write stage business, . authorship of henry vi., r. . white's idea of, . anonymous, . anonymous or pseudonymic authorship, prevalent, . see joint authorship. insecurity of. see author, copyright, nashe, printers, plays. insecurity of authorship. see star chamber. autographs of w. s. see "florio'" autograph. b. bacon, and shakespeare misquote passage of aristotle, . and shakespeare, unknown to each other, . appears in new theory, . believes in teaching history by drama, . could have appraised the s. drama . did william shakespeare write works of, , . directs certain ms. locked up, . driven to "the jews," . see "shylock." his acquirements, . his estimate of the theatre, . his letter to the queen, . his "northumberland ms.," . his reasons for concealment, , . his "sonnet" what may be, , . his youth compared with shakespeare's, . last act of, his memorandum concerning, . letter to sir john davies, , . may have brought together first folio, . neglected nothing, . no cause to mourn for elizabeth, . not mentioned to shakespeare by jonson, . bacon, often wrote in other's names, . or is he told of shakespeare by, . possesses the qualities assigned to author of the dramas, . silent as to william shakespeare, . surmised philosophical purpose, . when appointed attorney-general plays cease to appear, . bacon, delia, apparent audacity of announcement, . believed in a joint authorship, . believes "hamlet" to be key-note of the plays, . claims to have discovered bacon's clew, . death of, . estimate of her book, , note. extracts from her first paper, . her approach to an overt act, - . her belief as to the manuscripts, , . her poverty, - . her question as to the ms. answered, . history of her theory, . what it really was, . reception of her theory in america, . in england, . supposed to be mad, , . but her madness contageous, . visits stratford, - . old verulam, id. what her madness was, , . writes her first paper in , . "baconian" and "delia bacon" theories discriminated, . baconian theory, abstract of, . bibliography of the, . indifferent as to wm. s. being a law student, . in general, what, . preponderance for, . bailey, rev. john, invents a new shakespeare story, , note. "bartholomew fair," induction to. see jonson, ben, . becker death mask, the, . bed, the second best, . not explained by r. gr. white or by steevens, . "beeston," author of "schoolmaster story," . "beeston," who was he? . belleforest, borrowed from in the plays, . berni, paraphrased by iago, . best seats at theatres on the stage, . bible, shakespeare and the, , note, . bibliography of the baconian theory, . "biographies" of william shakespeare, modern, . de quincy's, . birthday of w. s. see st. george's day. blackfriars theater, james burbage builds, . blood, circulation of the, - . boaden, james, his summary of the portraits, . boccaccio, borrowed from in the plays, . bohemia. see sea-coast of bohemia. book-making, knowledge of, displayed in plays. see printing. botany, knowledge of, displayed in the plays. see flowers. boucicault, dion, a surmised example of what w. s. was, . his suggestion, . answer to, . boys, took female parts in shakespeare's day, . brother of w. s. see oldys. brown c. armitage, his discovery as to sonnets, . brown, henry, theory of the sonnets, . bunyan, john, analogy of life to shakespeare, , . illustrations of what genius can not do, . burbage, james, builds the blackfriars theater, . burbage, richard, lines interpolated in hamlet to suit, , note. said to have painted portraits of w. s., . burns, robert, an example of genius, . comparison between, and "shakespeare," . illustration of what genius can not do, . "business" of wm. shakespeare, now obsolete, . bust in possession of garrick club, . see garrick club bust. bust, the stratford, . see portraits. whitewashed, by malone, . byron, lord, his estimate of the shakespearean plays, . c. campbell, lord, his notice of the legal acquirements of w. s. . canon of the plays, first folio plus pericles, . capell, preserves specimens of shakespeare's wit, . carlyle, thomas, calls on delia bacon, . suggested her writing first paper, . cartwright, expert evidence as to, . testimony as to shakespeare's acquirements, . catholic, roman, was shakespeare a, . see papist. chandos portrait, the, . rumored to have been by burbage, . chatterton, thomas, difference between his case and shakespeare's, . chettle, wonders that shakespeare does not mourn elizabeth, . his apology for greene's expression, . christian monastery in ephesus in days of pericles, . chronologies of the plays, absurdity of the so-called, . "chronologies," where they all agree, . cinthio, borrowed from in the plays, . circumstantial evidence, corroborated, , passim. necessary to these questions, . classical knowledge, displayed in plays, , . difficulties suggested by, . clergy, benefit of, , note. included all learned professions, id. clown, the principal actor in shakespearean theaters, , . coat of arms, shakespeare's. see arms. cohn, albert, his theory as to shakespeare in germany, . coincidences, shakespearean's idea of the, , note. coleridge, his opinion as to authorship, . commentators, bore down upon the shakespearean text, . commentary, sample of the run of, . compromise theory, ; applied to henry vi., . theobald and others anticipate, , . condell, henry. see heminges & condell. contemporaries of w. s., why they did not suspect him, or silent if they did, . contemporary statements in baconian theory, . conversations of ben jonson with drummond of hawthorn-den, . copies, "true, original," identified, , , , . copyright, disraeli thinks first folio a scheme for, , note. first claimed years after w. s.'s death, . first english law of, . see author. cornelius, jansen, said to have been family painter of southampton, . court of star chamber, takes jurisdiction of matters literary, . curse of stratford, , . d. davies, rev. richard, his account of w. s., . davies, sir john, letter from bacon to, . davenant, sir william, owned the chandos portrait, . claimed illegitimate descent from w. s., , note. death mask, the becker, . dedication of the sonnets, . why insulting, . twisted out of shape, . simple explanation of, . "delia bacon" and "baconian" theories, discriminated, . delia bacon and new theories coincide, . see bacon, delia. denham, expert evidence of, , . testimony as to shakespeare's acquirements, . de quincy, thomas, his "biography" of w. s., . analyzed, . ignores authorities, . deer stealing, "rejected on insufficient evidence," . difficulty is that we know so much about w. s., rather than so little, . digges, expert evidence of , . testimony as to skakesperean acquirements, . "discoveries" of ben jonson, fatal to shakespearean theory, - . disraeli thinks first folio a scheme for copyright, , note. dogberry, prototypes of, . doubtful plays, the, , , . doubtful plays, tlie, never disowned by shakespeare, . not doubtful in shakespeare's day, - . one missing, . dowdell letter, the, . down, edward, locates proserpo's island, , note. drama, esteemed by bacon a form of teaching history, . droeshout portrait, - . not flattering to its subject. . only one ever "authenticated," . probably accurate likeness, . was faithfully engraved, . drummond of hawthornden, ben jonson's conversations with, . dryden, john, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . dugdale, his mention of shakespeare, . "duke humphrey," a missing, doubtful play, . dyce follows hallam, . e. earlom portrait, the, . elaborations of the plays. see emendations. elizabeth, queen. see queen elizabeth. elizabeth, the english of, . elizabethan dramatists, estimate of, . ellesmere, w. ii. smith's letter to, . elze, dr. carl, believes the s. was in germany and scotland, . emendations of the plays in first folio, extensiveness of, . english, a then neglected accomplishment, . a very rare accomplishment in elizabeth's day, . probably not taught in stratford grammar school, . purity of, used in plays, . the, of elizabeth, . the, of shakespeare, not derived from a study of contemporary writers, . english library, what was the, of shakespeare's day, . english renaissance drama. see renaissance drama, english. enlargements of the plays in first folio. see emendations. entomology, knowledge of, displayed in the plays, - . epitaph on shakespeare's tomb, . epitaphs, by william shakespeare, on elias james, john â coombe, and others, . epitaphs, how halliwell accounts for, . of w. s. not claimed by anybody else, . complete collection of, . essex connected with plays, .. evelyn, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . "evening mass," not necessarily indicative of shakespeare's creed, . evidence, internal, failure of, . of historical plays as to bacon, . poetry not competent of, a fact, . see typographical evidence, printing. expert evidence as to the plays, . f. fac similes. see forgery. "falstaff in love," order for, , . family of shakespeare, not zealous of their relative's reputation, . farmer, dr., his solution of the shakespearean difficulty, . specimen of, . his theory of shakespeare, quite as incredible as the other, . stops just short of the truth, . felton's portrait. . see portraits. female parts, taken by boys, . fire, great, of london, not accountable for dearth of shakespearean records, . first folio, contains only twenty-six known plays, ; dilemma presented by, . evidence of authorship from, , , , . inspection of, proves sources of, . printed from shakespeare's copies, - . see typographical evidence. time of appearance suggestive, . see emendations. "florio," the, in british museum, . flowers, knowledge of, displayed in plays, . forgery, fac simile is usually, . literary, not difficult, . of a signature, . french and italian, not taught at stratford school, . fuller, eight years old when shakespeare died. . expert evidence of, , . extract from, , note. his estimate of the shakespearean plays, . his mention of shakespeare, .. testimony as to shakespeare's acquirements, , , note. furness, w. ii., unable to accept shakespearean authorship, , . g. gallants, relations with managers, . garrick club bust, the, . see portraits. geography, knowledge of, displayed in plays, . geology, knowledge of, in the plays, . germany, shakespeare in, cohn's theory, . "good friend, for jesus's sake, forbear," etc., . grammar school of stratford. see stratford school. gravitation, law of, stated in the plays, . great fire of london. see fire. greene, robert, a father of the english stage, cited as a witness, contra, , . had his admirers, , note. his estimate of wm. shakespeare, . no worse than his kind, . only contemporary of w. s. who exposed the forgery, the "steal" he complained of, . title of his book, , note. contents of, . told the truth about wm. shakespeare, , , , note. "groat's worth of wit." see greene, . "groom, lord leicester's," delia bacon's name for s., . h. habitues of shakespeare's theaters, who were, . hallam, henry, doubtful as to accepting s.'s authorship, . his estimate of the plays, . opinion as to their philology, . halliwell, accounts for the epitaphs, . follows hallam, . halliwell-phillips, j. c., his "outlines." . does not dispel the difficulties, . hamlet, believed by delia bacon to be key-note of plays, , harrison, john, cited as a witness, . hawthorne, nathaniel, his narrative of delia bacon, , . hawthornden, drummond of. see drummond of hawthornden. heminges & condell, cited as witnesses, . corroborate jon son's testimony, . how procured emendations, , . their "copy" for first folio, . their reason for the first folio, , note. henry the sixth, grant white's idea of, . greene's complaint about, . not shakespeare's, . wonderful "run" of, . henry the seventh, curious evidence of bacon's, . heywood, author of portions of "passionate pilgrim," . writes plays of the period, . "historic doubt," the shakespearean myth not a, . historical evidence. see circumstantial evidence. passim. historical plays, evidence of, as to bacon, . history, bacon thinks taught by drama, . hume, david, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . hunter, rev. joseph, identifies proserpo's island, , note. i iago, a comedian's part, . speech of, a striking paraphrase of berni, . ideal shakespeare, every man may select his own, "imogen" name and character, whence taken, . imposture literary, state of the law favorable to, . ingleby, dr c. m., his plea for shakespeare, innuendo, evidence by way of, . supporting ben jonson , note. innuendoes, of sir tobie matthew, , . insecurity of authorship, . see authorship, copyright, printers, etc. nashe's, testimony as to, . heywood's, testimony as to, . internal evidence. see evidence, internal. italian and french, not taught at stratford school, . italy, knowledge of, displayed in plays, , . intricate acquaintance with manners and customs of, . j. "jacques-peter," probably original form of name "shakespeare,". . james, king. see king james. jansen, the s. portrait, . johnson, gerard, said to have made stratford bust, . johnson, samuel, his estimate of shakespearean plays, , , . specimens of his commentaries on plays, . joint authorship, miss bacon's theory was, . jones, inigo, devises trappings for court masques, . jonson, ben, a "famous witness," . an expert witness, , . applies same words and figure to bacon and to w. s. a university man, . cited as a witness, contra, . his conversations with drummond, . his "discoveries" fatal to shakespearean theory, - . his fling at shakespeare in prologue, etc., . his obituary verses, . his testimony, . analysis of, . his opinion of the droeshout likeness, - . why is libel on w. s., . his plays not popular, . never mentions bacon to w. s. or w. s. to bacon, . plays boswell to bacon and shakespeare alike, . studiously inclined, . wants to blot out , shakespearean lines, . jordan, john, . jordan, john, probable inventor of story and verses, . judith shakespeare, never taught to write her name. , . k. king james's letter, story of, when invented, , . king, thomas, his "plea" for shakespeare, . his argument, . l. ladies, seated on the stage, . lampoon on sir thomas lucy, two versions of, . latinisms, in the plays, . law in "merchant of venice," , note. lawyers. see young lawyers. learning contained in the plays, . no reason for its being there, . legal acquirements of author of the plays, , . libraries, public or circulating, none in london, . library. see english library. did he have a, , . plays can not be studied without a, . plays not composed without a, . shakespeare's, what it must have been, . license to print, meaning of a, . ling & trundell, procure copies in shorthand, . proof of fact, . lin tot, bernard, invented the king james letter story in , , . literary imposture. see imposture, literary. literature, persecuted if unlicensed, . see star chamber, copyright, . "lord leicester's groom." see "groom." "lover's complaint," appears with the sonnets, . "lucrece," of doubtful authorship, , . lucy, sir thomas, lampoon on, . m. macaulay, accounts for bunyan's works, , . maids of honor, seated on the stage, . malone, edmund, his "chronologies," , . his contributions to shakespearean biography, , et seq. his shakespearean labors, , , . whitewashes the stratford bust, . management, theatrical, no sinecure in th century, . manuscripts, bacon's will directs certain, locked up, . delia bacon's idea of their disposition, , . may yet come to light, . minute and constant search for, , . northumberland, discovered by spedding, . marshall's picture, . see portraits. masques, william shakespeare wrote none, . massey, gerald, makes a romance from sonnets, . matthew, sir tobie, banters bacon, . his postscripts, , , , . innuendos of, . knew bacon, but not shakespeare, . quotation from, to this effect, . why he did not reveal bacon's secret, , note. medicine, knowledge of, displayed in the plays, - . medico-legal knowledge, displayed in the plays, . merchant of venice, law in, , note. meres, francis, cited as a witness, . his testimony critical, not historical, . merry wives of windsor, story of order for, may be true, . rebuke to lechery in, . perhaps to elizabeth, , note. milton, john, first to claim author's copyright, . his areopagitica, . his estimate of shakespearean plays, , . value of his estimate, , . mitylene, curious custom prevalent in, alluded to in pericles, , note. monasteries, dissolution of the, . monastery, christian, in ephesus, . montgomery, perhaps connected with plays, . music, familiarity with, , note, n. nashe, thomas, his testimony to insecurity of authorship, . new and delia bacon theories, coincide, . new theory, alternative presented by, . further details of, . the, what is, . newton, his discoveries anticipated by plays, . northumberland mss., discovered by spedding, . "noverint," what nashe may have meant by, . o. oldys, story about a brother of william shakespeare, . orthography of name shakespeare, - . othello, appears seven years after shakespeare's death, . p. palmerston, lord, convert to baconian theory, . his idea of ben jonson, . papist, was w. s. a, , . parallelisms, argument from in baconian theory, . holmes's list of, . examples of, , . reduced to an ordo by holmes, . passionate pilgrim, not written by w. s., . shakespeare's name removed in d edition, . the, written partly by heywood, . pascal, difference between his case and shakespeare's, . pembroke, a dedication of sonnets to, insulting, . sonnets could not be dedicated to, . pepys, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . "pericles," allusion to a peculiar custom in, , note. rejected by first folio, but restored by shakespeareans, . phillips. see halliwell-phillips. philological test of shakespearean plays, - . pickpockets, pilloried on the stage, , note, plagiarism. see authorship, greene, heywood, plays, printers. plays, anachronisms not misleading, . audiences of the, not critical as to the dialogue, . plays, authorship of, revealed, , , , . boys took female parts in, . classical knowledge of the, . contemporary criticism of the character of, . doubt as to single authorship of, . dramatic license of these, . emendations of, in first folio. see emendations, first folio. forty-two credited to w. shakespeare, . how put into type, , , . manuscripts of, jealously guarded by theaters, manuscripts of the, how procured, . name of actors in, . name of author of, . need not have been didactic, , . not composed without a library, . no tradition connecting shakespeare with composition of, . ordinarily mere local sketches, , . passed with first audiences as shakespeare's, . printed instead of acted, . probable reason why called shakespeare's, . shakespearean, canon of, . sources of unauthorized reprints of, . tabulated, . taken down in shorthand, . the, a phenomenon in experience, . the "copyrights" of, . not mentioned in the will, . the doubtful. see doubtful plays. their action only used, . the masses not "up" to, to-day, . the philological test of, - . the present text made by piecemeal since w. s.'s death, the, were popular with their first audiences, . traces in, of aristocratic authorship, . typographical evidence of authorship of, , , , . use of warwickshire names in the, . use of warwickshire expressions in the, . plays, were performed, , , . where did the printers get hold of, , , . see printers, typographical evidence. why bacon may not have acknowledged, . written to be played, not printed, . poems, dedication of, to southampton, . fathered upon shakespeare, . the, see their various titles. "poetaster," the, a hit at shakespeare in, , note. poetical works of william shakespeare, complete collection, . poetry, not competent evidence of a fact, . pope, alexander, his apprentices write parts of, . his estimate of plays, . indicates portions to admire, . portraits, boaden's account of the, . bust in possession of garrick club, . criticised as if purely ideal, . droeshout, the only one that ever was authenticated, . earlom's copy, . one lately discovered in australia, . shakespearean argument from the, , . the chandos, . the felton head. the jansen, . the marshall. the stratford bust, . the zuccharo, . "practicable" scenery, unknown, . exceptions, , note. presumption, the, as to the shakespearean authorship, its value, . well disturbed in , . printed matter, most careful record of, in those days, . printers, assigned any name they pleased to literary work, . did what they pleased with literary work, . of first folio followed copy too closely, . where did they get "copy" for the plays, , . printing, knowledge of, displayed in plays, - . of the sonnets. see sonnets. prologue to "every man in his humour," . see jonson, ben. proof reader, of first folio, . prophesy, no such thing as a prophet of the past, . proserpo's island "located," by hunter, , note; by dowden, , note. pseudonymic authorship. see anonymous. putnam's magazine, article in, . see bacon, delia. q. queen elizabeth, her apochryphal correspondence with w. s., . her order for falstaff may be true, , . legend of her order for "merry wives," , note. queen elizabeth's glove, story of, . question of the authorship, why not raised earlier, . first raised in chamber's journal, . r. raleigh, knows nothing of william shakespeare, . perhaps connected with plays, . suggested as an author of the s. drama, . "ratsei's ghost," pamphlet of, . ravenscroft, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . readings, various, of the text of the plays, what they prove, . red cloth issued to shakespeare, , note. renaissance drama, english, , . reynolds, sir joshua, copies the chandos, . roman catholic, was shakespeare a, . "rosalin's complaint," not by w. s., . rowe, his life of w. s., probably honest, . rutland, perhaps connected with plays, . rymer, thomas, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . s. scenery. see practicable scenery, . "schoolmaster story." see beeston. scotland, dr. elze thinks shakespeare was in, . sea-coast of bohemia, . a part of the stage business, . a theory for, , note. second-best bed, explained by shakespeareans, . shaftesbury, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . shakespeare, john, ale-taster of stratford, . fined for throwing muck, . records of his life, . shakespeare, judith. see judith shakespeare. shakespeare, mrs. wm., why she did not live with her husband, . shakespeare, susanna. see susanna hall. slandered by a neighbor, . law suit for . shakespeare, the name, original form probably "jacques-peter," . shakespeare, "william, a good penman, . a reckless borrower, . authography of the name, . author, not editor, . a "utility" gentleman in the stock company, - . "autograph" in british museum, . a wag, not a worker, . born versed in all knowledge? . career in stratford, . covers his tracks well, . credited with forty-two plays in lifetime, . did he make emendations to plays, , , . did he write bacon's works, . did not write his first composition in his native patois, . difficulties presented by his will, . does not disclaim authorship of passionate pilgrim, . dramatic canon of, and bacon, editor, not author. - . expert evidence as to, . family. see family of shakespeare. "father" anything, willing to, . fortunate enough to secure a poet, , . funny mr., . his authorship disproved by first folio, , , . his birthday, . st. george's day selected for, . shakespeare, william, his "business" rejected, . his death bed, , . his income, in modern figures, $ , , . his income, perhaps exaggerated by ward, . his interest to keep plays out of print, if his, . his library. see library, . his literary acquirements, . his name a safe pseudonym, . his name discovered in northumberland mss., . his rapid accumulation of wealth, . a self-made man, . his supposed travels, . his weakness for pedigrees, , note. holding horses, story not improbable, . interpolates as he copies, . interpolates popular songs, . made his money by acting, . makes iago a comedian, . may have been pre-contracted to his wife, . name possesses market value, , . name removed from d edition of "passionate pilgrim," . natural that he should have followed players to london, . never suspected his reputation, . no pride of authorship in, . not a law student, . not solicitous or expectant of any posthumous fame, . no tradition connecting, with composition of plays, . no uncertainty as to his character, . nowhere met in tradition or history, as a school-boy, . one "biographer" of, . only one attempt to prove him a university man, . other duties, . out of favor with king james, , note. portraits of, . usually criticised as if purely ideal, . probably remodeled the plays, . records of his life, . retires to money lending in stratford, . rev. richard davie's life of, . shakespeare, william, r. g. white accuses him of "want of probity," . sketches dogberry, , . specimen of his wit, . speculations as to first employment, . "wanted art," . was he admitted to noble companionship? . was he a roman catholic? . was not lawyer, physician, etc., . was there any-thing he did not know? . where did he find his leisure? . where did he get his material? question never asked, , . who wrote. see who wrote shakespeare. passim, why he purchased arms, . wrote no masques, . shakespearean question, not what, but who? . shakespeare's poetical works, complete collection of, . sharpham, his evidence, . "shylock" appears at a suggestive time, . sidney, description of theatrical properties, . siege of troy, gunpowder at, . signatures, . see forgery. smith, w. h., can not accept s.'s authorship, . follows miss bacon, does not claim priority over her, . thinks that w. s. could not read or write, . songs, shakespeare introduces popular, . sonnets, authorship of, not involved in this question, . dedicated by their printer to friend of his own, . mr. bernsdorf's theory as to, . mr. boaden's theory of, . mr. brown's theory is of doubtful force, . m. chasles's theory as to, . mr. dowden's theory as to, . mr. massey,s theory as to, . mr. minto's theory as to, . mr. niel's theory as to, . mr. thompson's theory as to, . mr. wordsworth's theory as to, . sonnets, speculations as to meaning of, - . why assigned to shakespeare, . southampton, a comparatively poor man, , . dedication to, as "mr. w. h.,: insulting, . alleged acquaintance with shakespeare, , , . did he forget his caste? , . his gift to shakespeare incredible, , . how perhaps connected with plays, . never suspected of literary tastes, , . no evidence that he knew shakespeare, , . biographers find no trace of it, . story manufactured by shakespeareans, , . poems dedicated to, . story of his munificence, why probably a forgery, , , . supposed friendship for shakespeare, . why great doubt as to his being a companion of shakespeare, . spedding, james, believed in more than one author of henry viii., . spenser and chaucer, the great fire not fatal to records of, . spenser, his reference to "gentle willie," explained, , note. his reference to "Ætion," , note. stage, best seats were on the, . "business," probably not written by author of text, . see "business." modern, rejects the shakespearean "business" then only available depot for literary work, . star chamber, court of, . had jurisdiction of literary matter, id. stationers' company, the blood-hound of the star chamber, . the origin of, . steele, richard, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . st. george's day, selected as a birth-clay for w. s. . stratford bust, . see portraits. said to be by gerard johnson, . said to be by thomas stanton. . stratford grammar school, was w. s. a pupil of, . stratford portrait, the, . stratford school, speculations as to, , , , , , stratford, vicar of, treats miss bacon tenderly, . style, literary, not reliable evidence, . of bacon and shakespeare dissimilar, . of the shakespearean plays, . "reader must judge for himself as to, . "suppers after the play," . susanna hall, enigmatical epitaph over, . swift, dean, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . t. taine, his picture of shakespearean theaters, . of shakespearean audiences, . tate, nahum, his estimate of shakespearean plays, . "tempest," was a drollery in ben jonson's day, , note. theater, management of, a precarious livelihood in the th century, . theaters, best seats on the stage, . of shakespeare's day, description of, . shakespearean habitues of, . see audiences, plays. theobald and others, anticipate compromise theory, , theobald believed in more than one shakespearean author, . theories, compromise between, . shakespearean, three well defined, . see new theory, delia bacon, and baconian. who anticipated, . t. thompson, wm., his "renaissance drama," . thinks manuscripts may be safe, . thorpe, thomas, dedicates the sonnets to a friend, , . prints and copyrights the sonnets, . trade-mark, sort of common in name, . travels, wm. shakespeare's supposed, . treatises, scientific, the audiences did not want, . "troilus and cressida," . see doubtful plays. troy. see siege of troy. "true, original copies," proof of what they were, , . see copies, first folio, typographical evidence. typographical evidence of authorship, , , , , u. ulrici, opinion of, learning of plays, . unitary theory, property of smith and holmes. see bacon, delia, . v. vega, lope de, computed to have written , , verses, . writes "without blotting a line," . venice, knowledge of, displayed in plays, . venus and adonis, argument from that poem alone, . boldness of assignment to w. s., . popularity of, . why not a first production, . why of doubtful authorship, , . w. ward, dominie, hears about shakespeare, . testimony as to shakespeare's acquirements, . ward, rev. john, his account of w. s., . warwickshire, names, use of, in the plays, . expressions, use of in plays, . "watch," the, actual curiosities, . burghley's account of, , note. werner, anticipated by the plays, . "wet combats," wit combats were, . is it a misprint? . "w. h.," a friend of thorpe, dedicator or dedicatee? . theories as to meaning of, - . various translations of, . who was he? , , , . white, r. g., admits that managers "kept a poet," , note. his idea of henry vi., . opinion of english of plays, . who wrote shakespeare? passim. question first asked in , . wilkes, geo., his "american point of view," . will, difficulties of the, explained, . will, no mention of any plays in, . or of any theatrical property, . "wit combats," were "wet combats," . wood, anthony, his mention of w. s., . works, poetical, of w. s. see poetical works. wotton, description of a popular play, . description of theaters of his days, . y. "young ladies' argument," the, . young lawyers, wrote plays rapidly, , note. z. zuccharo, portrait, the, . see portraits. produced from images generously made available by the internet archive.) the dorothy crain series ciphers for the little folks a method of teaching the greatest work of sir francis bacon baron of verulam, viscount st. alban designed to stimulate interest in reading, writing and number work, by cultivating the use of an observant eye with an appendix on the origin, history and designing of the alphabet _by_ helen louise ricketts riverbank laboratories educational department dorothy crain, _director of kindergarten_ geneva, illinois copyright, george fabyan introduction these lessons are presented as suggestions with the idea that the teacher or parent will adapt, lengthen, shorten, or remake, as the needs of the little folk demand. their value will depend on the way in which they are brought before the children. the aim is not to impose on children adult knowledge and accomplishments, but to afford them experiences that on their own account appeal to them, and at the same time have educational value and significance. children should have a great deal of handwork; they do their best thinking when they are planning something to do with their hands. their attention is much more easily focused upon something they are doing with their hands than upon something which they hear or read. building with the blocks, paper folding and cutting, painting and drawing, and what is known as constructive work, are all means of self-expression. an explanatory paragraph will accompany each lesson. in order that the workings of the biliteral cipher, from which these lessons were derived, may be more readily understood, a short explanation will follow for the guidance of the teacher or parent, to whom it is left to choose the best methods of explaining the cipher to the children, step by step. the biliteral cipher devised by francis bacon and explained in detail in his advancement of learning (see spedding's english edition of bacon's works, vol. iv, pages - ) is based upon the mathematical fact that the transposition of two objects (blocks, letters, etc.) will yield dissimilar combinations, of which only would be necessary to represent all the letters in our alphabet (_i_ and _j_, _u_ and _v_ being used interchangeably in the th century). lesson i of this series shows the combinations used by bacon, and constitutes the "code" or "key." by reference to lesson i it will be seen that variations in the grouping of _a_'s and _b_'s, five at a time, are made to represent each letter of the alphabet, except that _i_ and _j_ and _u_ and _v_ are regarded as interchangeable. in all the succeeding lessons, objects are chosen to represent _a_ or _b_, and the order or succession of their grouping, when compared with the code (lesson i), will determine the letter they represent. words in a language being made up simply of combinations of letters, it is clear that as long as only two differences are available, words can be built up by making the proper combinations according to the code. any differences will do, and to this fact are due the possibilities for the exercise of the thinking powers, imagination, and skill on the part of children in this work. lesson vi, for example, combines elements of instruction and play in an interesting manner. the transmission of words and sentences can be accomplished even without the use of objects, for two different motions of the fingers or hands will do; likewise two different sounds--in fact any differences perceptible to any of the five senses can be used. "wig-wagging" as used by the u. s. army signal service is based upon this cipher. thus many games can be planned which will have an educational value in training to a higher efficiency every faculty the child possesses. the lessons have been arranged in a sequence according to their increasing order of complexity, leading up gradually to the presentation of the possibility of sending hidden messages in an open communication without arousing any suspicion as to the presence of anything secret. in lesson xiv the phrase "biliteral cipher" is made to contain the hidden word "key" by the use of a capital letter for the _a_ form and a small letter for the _b_ form. of course the differences between the _a_ form and the _b_ form can be made much less apparent than the differences between capital and small letters; in fact the differences can be made so small that they would be imperceptible to the casual observer, but it still would be possible to distinguish them. it is in this phase of the work that accuracy and care in the formation of letters may be taught, not only in script or handwriting, but also in printing, both of which are now fast becoming lost arts. cipher writing, if properly taught, will give practice in penmanship that will be interesting and not onerous to children. the adaptability of the biliteral cipher to the manifold uses to which it can be put makes its pedagogical possibilities far-reaching; and the field for the exercise of the faculties of both teacher and pupil, parent and child, is one of the broadest, most instructive and entertaining that has ever been opened to the little folks of primary age. any further information which the instructor may care to secure will be furnished on application to the riverbank laboratories. dorothy crain training the eye to see that the faculty of sight needs training will be admitted by every reasonable person, but how best to give the eye this advantage is a question which has never been settled. an english hunter, the author of a book on norway, gives some interesting hints upon the matter: the reason that the different characteristics of tracks are not observed by the untrained eye is not because they are so very small as to be invisible, but because they are--to that eye--so inconspicuous as to escape notice. in the same way the townsman will stare straight at a grouse in the heather, or a trout poised above the gravel in the brook, and will not see them; not because they are too small, but because he does not know what they look like in those positions. he does not know, in fact, what he is looking for, and a magnifying glass would in no wise help him. to the man who does not know what to look for, the lens may be a hindrance, because it alters the proportions to which his mind is accustomed, and still more because its field is too limited.--youth's companion. lesson i this lesson is intended to teach the code or key. attention is called to the mathematical regularity of its construction, which will enable the teacher to demonstrate it in a very simple manner. first write the column of numbers from to . then opposite number place five red circles in a row. under the last one in this row, and on a line with number place a blue circle, and continue alternating red and blue down the column. then under the th red circle in the st row place another red one, then two blue ones, alternating reds with blues down the column. in the rd column the reds and blues alternate in sets of four; in the nd column, in sets of eight, and in the st column, in sets of . since only combinations are necessary, the last eight of the possible have been omitted. now opposite these combinations place the letters of the alphabet in regular order, remembering that i and j, u and v are used interchangeably. to facilitate the use of the code the red and the blue circles may be designated by small _a_ and small _b_ respectively. the right hand section of this lesson gives the code worked out on this plan and makes future reference easy. in all the succeeding lessons one form (whether it be blocks, beads, yarn or what not) will be called the _a_ form, and the other will be called the _b_ form. on account of the nature of the code, the _a_ forms always predominate; and in getting together materials for this work, the teacher should be guided accordingly. [illustration: o o o o o a = a a a a a o o o o o b = a a a a b o o o o o c = a a a b a o o o o o d = a a a b b o o o o o e = a a b a a o o o o o f = a a b a b o o o o o g = a a b b a o o o o o h = a a b b b o o o o o i-j = a b a a a o o o o o k = a b a a b o o o o o l = a b a b a o o o o o m = a b a b b o o o o o n = a b b a a o o o o o o = a b b a b o o o o o p = a b b b a o o o o o q = a b b b b o o o o o r = b a a a a o o o o o s = b a a a b o o o o o t = b a a b a o o o o o u-v = b a a b b o o o o o w = b a b a a o o o o o x = b a b a b o o o o o y = b a b b a o o o o o z = b a b b b ] lesson ii [illustration] short lines represent the _a_ form, long lines, the _b_ form. the cipher word is "the." various forms of sewing cards, or yarns of different colors may be used. lesson iii [illustration] in this weaving mat the light squares represent the _a_ form, the dark ones, the _b_ form. the arrow marks the starting point, and the reading proceeds from left to right in each line. the cipher message is "mary had a little lamb." any sentence containing the requisite number of letters can be inserted on the same principle. lesson iv [illustration] this lesson embodies what may be designated as a symbolic cipher design. this design conveys the idea of the setting sun, and hence the cipher word contained within is "sunset." red sticks represent the _b_ form, orange sticks, the _a_ form. the arrow marks the starting point, and the reading proceeds in a clockwise direction. lesson v [illustration] this is another symbolic cipher design picturing "humpty-dumpty." the blue squares represent the _a_ form, the red squares the _b_ form. the cipher message is "sat on a wall." the blank squares can be filled by colored crayons or blocks, and the children can thus practice the building of the message by referring to the code in lesson i. lesson vi [illustration] another symbolic cipher design in which the hens represent the _b_ form, the chicks the _a_ form. the cipher word is "egg," reading from left to right. this sort of symbolic cipher designing is susceptible of endless variation, and gives a hint of the possibility of drawing cipher pictures. a sufficient supply is furnished so that when cut out, the hens and chicks may be utilized to spell out various words under the direction of the teacher. lesson vii--the time-teaching clock in this clock the movable colored dots indicating the minutes are used to spell out the time in cipher. in the working cards to be provided for the child the colored dots are to be inserted in the holes made for the purpose around the face of the clock. there being sixty dots, any phrase expressive of time not exceeding twelve letters in length (that is, twelve times five dots for each letter equals ) is available for indicating the time in cipher. that is to say, any phrase such as "half-past ten," "nine-thirty," etc., can be indicated on the clock by using five times as many dots as there are letters in the phrase selected. should there be less than twelve letters in the phrase, the holes remaining are to be left blank. this lesson is extremely flexible in respect to the many combinations which it makes possible. the teacher or parent should bear in mind that the most effective use of the clock is to be attained by first choosing a phrase designating some time of the day which is significant in the daily experience of the child--such as the opening or closing hour of school, the play hour, the dinner hour, or "bed-time." this phrase is converted into cipher by having the child place the dots representing the letters of the phrase, beginning at the figure twelve, around the clock face. after this has been done the child should be asked to "decipher" the phrase by naming the letter which each group of five dots stands for. when this is accomplished, the ability to read the time becomes an unconscious achievement, since the hands of the clock are then placed by the parent or teacher, or by the child under her direction, in the proper position to indicate the deciphered phrase. if, for example, the phrase "half-past nine" is selected and the child has extracted this from the colored dot combination, the hands of the clock are moved to nine-thirty. the child, with the phrase fresh in his mind, learns from this the position of the hands of the clock representing the time, since the mental image of the clock face with the hands in the required position establishes an association which becomes indelibly impressed on the child's mind. the method here described is the best for young children. with children of more advanced age and greater ability to use their own minds, the reverse practice may be followed. the teacher may name the phrase designating the time, and direct the child to put in place the colored dots representing the letters of the phrase by referring for each letter to the code. this requires an intelligence of a higher order than the method first described. [illustration] by reference to the code the arrangement of the dots on the clock will be found to spell the time indicated by the hands, i. e., "five past four." the red dots represent the _a_, the blues the _b_. lesson viii [illustration] on this cipher necklace the square beads represent the _a_ form, the round beads the _b_ form. the cipher words are "yankee doodle." for working this or any other appropriate phrase, the child should string the beads on one of the laces provided. lesson ix [illustration] this is similar to the preceding lesson except that in this case the blue beads represent the _a_ form, the orange beads, the _b_ form. the cipher words are "a cipher chain." lesson x [illustration] this cipher necklace combines both lessons viii and ix, and shows how two ciphers may be infolded at once. reading the beads first as regards their shape and using the same system as in lesson viii, the necklace still spells out the word "yankee doodle." then reading the beads as regards color, the words "a cipher chain" are deciphered, as in lesson ix. this lesson gives a hint of the possibility of enfolding three, four, or five cipher messages at once. lesson xi [illustration] in this lesson comes the first step in showing how a cipher message may be hidden within an ordinary architectural example. the red circles represent the _a_ form, the blue ones the _b_ form; the reading proceeds in exactly the same way in which the figure is written. the cipher phrase is "united states." any figures can be selected for the children to form, provided, when formed, they contain the requisite number of circles of each color. lesson xii [illustration] the cipher word is "pasture," the red circles being the _a_ form, the blue ones the _b_ form. lesson xiii [illustration] the cipher word is "barking," the red circles being the _a_ form, the blue ones the _b_ form. lesson xiv [illustration] the word "cipher" contains the hidden name "sir francis bacon," the red circles being the _a_ form, the blue ones, the _b_ form. the reading proceeds in the same manner as the strokes of the letters would be made by the hand. the design in the margin contains a double cipher, similar in construction to the necklace in lesson x. the red and blue pieces still represent the _a_ and the _b_ forms respectively, as before, and the cipher word is "alphabet." this constitutes the first cipher. the second cipher is based upon the difference in shape of these pieces, the long ones being the _a_ form, the circles, the _b_ form. the cipher word is "decipher." lesson xv [illustration] the phrase "biliteral cipher" is made to contain the hidden word "key" by the use of a capital letter for the _a_ form, and a small letter for the _b_ form. the borders to the lines contain the cipher word "letter," the blue sticks being the _a_ form, the red ones the _b_ form. the reading proceeds from left to right in each line, beginning with the line at the top. the children may be directed to cut out any set of letters of appropriate size to form any desired phrase, using capital and small letters on the same principle as in the example. lesson xvi [illustration: design for peacock lodge. for col. george fabyan.] cipher code a a a a a = a a a a a b = b a a a b a = c a a a b b = d a a b a a = e a a b a b = f a a b b a = g a a b b b = h a b a a a = i-j a b a a b = k a b a b a = l a b a b b = m a b b a a = n a b b a b = o a b b b a = p a b b b b = q b a a a a = r b a a a b = s b a a b a = t b a a b b = u-v b a b a a = w b a b a b = x b a b b a = y b a b b b = z explanation this architect's sketch presents an interesting method of making use of the biliteral cipher. the white bricks are supposed to represent the _a_ form letters, the shaded bricks the _b_ form. begin with the top of the wall, at the left-hand, below the tower, read the lines from left to right, and assign an _a_ or _b_ to each brick on that principle, dividing off the resultant _a_'s and _b_'s into groups of five. then refer to the accompanying cipher code which will show you for which letter of the alphabet each group stands. the result will be amusing as well as interesting and instructive. the origin, history and designing of the alphabet by helen louise ricketts the story of the alphabet chapter i i want to tell you a story about something you use every day, something you could not get along without, and yet that you never think about or are glad to have. i do not believe that even after i tell you several things about it you can guess what it is. it is one of the oldest things in the world, so old that no one knows when it was first used. it is a more wonderful thing, a great many people think, than the invention of steamboats and steamcars, or of airships and submarines. it is so important that you could not have any books without it, and if there were no books, you would not go to school, and then how could you learn all the things you want to know? it is so common that you see it and hear it and use it almost every minute of the day. it is made of twenty-six different parts. you can make me know what these are with a pencil or crayon. with them you speak and write and read. there are machines which hold these parts separately or form them in groups, and then leaving their likeness on paper give us books and stories to read. now i am afraid that i have told you too much! have you guessed what these twenty-six little tools are called? we call them, and so did your grandfather and greatgrandfather and all the people that lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago--the _alphabet_. you never knew before that the alphabet was such a wonderful thing, did you? would you like now to hear the story about it? long, long ago in a country called egypt, which is far across the sea (you may find it on your map, and that will make it more interesting for you) they had a very curious way of writing. they had no letters like our a, b, c's, but did what we call picture writing; that is, they drew pictures instead of writing letters and words as we do today. their writing looked like this-- [illustration] that does not look much like writing, does it? you do not know what it means, either, do you? yet the people at that time could read their picture writing just as easily as we can the alphabet writing. this is the way they sent messages to each other and wrote down the things they wanted to remember. do you know that they did not have any paper in those days long ago, either? what do you think they used? they cut their pictures on stone, on walls of buildings, and sometimes on wood and the bark of trees. they also had a material called papyrus, which was made from reeds growing in the swamps of egypt. think what a long time it must have taken them to write in this way, and how much easier and quicker it is for you and me today! to the north of egypt there is a small country called phoenicia. if you will look on your map you will find that the sea comes to the very shores of this country. in phoenicia there were many beautiful things that people in other countries wanted to buy. so the phoenicians built big ships and filled them full of the beautiful things and sailed away. across the water they came to a land by the name of greece, the country you know about where hercules and ulysses lived, and here they unloaded their ships. of course the phoenicians brought the picture writing they had learned from the egyptians with them. by this time they were beginning to think pictures took too long to draw, and they gradually changed the pictures into signs so that they could write easier and quicker. so the writing they brought to greece was quite different from the picture writing they had learned from the egyptians. it looked like this-- [illustration] we cannot understand this either, can we? but you can see it is much better than the way they wrote before. the greek people were very happy that the phoenicians brought such a wonderful way of writing with them and soon began to copy it, and use it in their country, too. when the phoenicians went back to their own country the greeks continued to use the sign writing, but changed it and made it more beautiful. they gave it a name, too, and called it by the names of the first two signs, _alpha_ which means "ox," and _beta_ which means "house." if you put these two words, _alpha_ and _beta_, together, what do you have? alpha-bet--the word we use today. now the greeks were an adventurous people, and one day they set sail in their ships, and went to the land of the romans, which is now called italy. they liked this new country, and some of them settled there. like the phoenicians long ago, they brought their new alphabet with them. the romans were a great and wonderful people, but they did not know the easy way of writing by signs that the greeks used. they saw right away what a fine thing this alphabet was, and began to use it for their writing, too. at first they wrote the signs exactly the way the greeks did, but soon they changed them, and made them simpler and better. chapter ii you know the story of the alphabet from its beginning so long ago in far egypt to the time when it came to the romans and how it changed from pictures to signs and from signs at last to the letters of the alphabet. you know, too, how hard it was for the people to write in those days when they had no better material than papyrus, wood and stone. that was a long, long time ago. would you like to hear a story about what has happened to writing since the time of the romans and the changes that have taken place in the alphabet in its travels through the countries of europe? the first great thing of importance was the discovery of a new material to write on. what do you think it was?--the skins of sheep and calves! that seems strange to us and we like the paper we use today better, but think what a great improvement this discovery was then and how much easier writing could be done on the smooth surface of the skin with a pen and ink. in all of the countries except italy this change of writing material brought about a change in the style of lettering too. the romans alone kept to the simple form of lettering they had always used and did not change it when writing on the skins. the other european countries gradually came to vary this style and make the letters more pointed, heavier and blacker and in some cases more elaborate. this style of lettering was called the gothic. do you see the difference between these two alphabets? [illustration] the alphabet had not been in these countries long enough yet for all the people to have learned to write. only a very few knew the letters, and as all the writing was done by hand, it took a long time to write a whole book. the few books that were written were so precious that they were chained in the churches and monasteries and the people were only allowed to read them there. at last in the country of germany a man by the name of gutenberg thought of a way to make more books and make them faster. and this way was by printing. just as the alphabet spread to the different countries so this new way of writing spread, until all of the people of europe were using printing machines and making many books. in germany the gothic lettering had been used when the writing was done by hand and gutenberg copied this style in printing the first book. when the art of printing spread to the different countries the gothic alphabet, of course, came with it and was accepted as the correct style of letter. the romans, however, still believed their alphabet to be the better and cut their printing type after the roman model. so a great quarrel sprang up between the different countries as to which alphabet should be used, the roman or the gothic. in italy a man called manutius tried to settle the quarrel by making a letter which all the printers would use and he called his style of lettering the italic. the printers who used the gothic and roman letters also used these italic letters, but were not willing to give up their own style and use the italic entirely. we are so used to seeing and using the alphabet today that we never ask ourselves how the letters came to look the way they do now. look at plate i, which shows a beautiful alphabet of gothic letters made by a famous german artist, albert dürer. there are twenty-nine of them, all entirely different, but still you can see that they are all brothers and sisters in one big family. do you wonder how this came about? look at plate ii and you will learn. the first letter _i_ is made by putting together a number of small squares in a certain way. can you see the way the other letters are made from this letter _i_?--the _n_ is made by putting two _i_'s together; the _m_, three _i_'s, and the _r_, one _i_ and an extra square at the top. go through the rest of the alphabet and see if you can find out the way it is made. now look at plates iii, iv, v, vi, and vii showing another alphabet by the same artist, which he patterned after the roman letters. he found that they were made according to a certain rule and proportion, and it was these he worked out in making his alphabet. here you see the pattern is a large square, and the letters are drawn very carefully in them. did you know before there was as much figuring and measuring done in the making of the alphabet as there is in building a house? look at the letter _e_, for example, and all the circles and squares that have been measured and drawn to make it. you will find that every letter is made just as carefully. here are the three _a_'s that you see in plate iii. you will find that they are not exactly alike. can you see the difference between them?--_a_, , is cut off in a curve at the top, _a_, , goes straight up in a sharp point, and _a_, , is cut off flat. do you notice, too, the difference in the thickness of the letters? [illustration] look at the other letters in this alphabet (plates iii, iv, v, vi, and vii) and see if you can tell me about them in the way i have told you about the _a_'s. for many, many years, the printers in the different countries used alphabets the artists had made for them, without being able to decide which they liked the best, the roman, gothic or italic. on plate viii you will find a little poem by shakespeare printed in these three alphabets. which one do you like the best? i am sure you will choose the one that is the simplest, the easiest to read and at the same time the most beautiful--the roman. in the quarrel which had been going on for so many years, the roman alphabet won the victory, and that is how it came about that the roman is used in printing all our newspapers and books today. at last after so many hundreds of years it has traveled through the other countries to us. many times you cannot recognize the letters, and they look very different from the roman models from which they were patterned, but that is because we are not as careful with the measurements and proportions as were albert dürer and the other masters in that time long ago. chapter iii you know now the beginning of the alphabet, the careful way it was planned and made, and how finally after so many years it has come to be used in the form in which we have it today. do you remember that when albert dürer made his alphabet of roman letters he made more than one form of each letter--there were three _a_'s, for example. would you like to know why he did this? plate ix shows you two other kinds of alphabets made long ago by a spanish artist, francisco lucas. look at the italic capital letters in the upper part of this plate. you can easily see that there are two different forms of the same letters, can you not? but now look at the small letters. you still see that there are two examples of each letter, but they are so much alike that you will have to look very carefully to see the difference between the two forms. why do you suppose this artist went to the trouble to make these letters so much alike, and yet different? do you not think that this would be a very strange thing to do unless there was a good reason for it? look at the lower part of the plate and you will see that there are two different forms of the small roman letters also. now turn back to lesson xv. you see that by using a capital letter for the _a_ form and a small letter for the _b_ form you were able to hide within the phrase "_biliteral cipher_" the word, "_key_." you can easily see that this would not be a good way to hide a secret, for the difference between the large and small letters is not only easy to see, but looks so strange that it is the first thing you notice. now suppose that instead of using a capital letter for the _a_ form and a small letter for the _b_ form you use for each letter of the alphabet, both capital and small, two forms which were very much alike but still were different. in the following line-- [illustration] you see the same phrase "_biliteral cipher_," but it does not look strange to you, does it? still, if you will study it carefully you will see that the first _i_ is different from the second, and that the first _l_ in "_biliteral_" is different from the second _l_. you have guessed by this time that the phrase "_biliteral cipher_," as it stands here, also contains a hidden word. the word is "_the_." this phrase was made to contain the word "_the_" by using the two forms of letters which you see in the upper part of plate ix and which were called "_doubles_" by the printers who used them several hundred years ago. now do you begin to see how important these two forms are? look again at the little shakespeare poem in the italic alphabet on plate viii. now that you know about _doubles_ you can see, if you have learned to use your eyes, that we have hidden a secret within this poem too. would you like to know what it is? we will help you to work it out by giving you what is called a _classifier_ which will make it easy to _decipher_ the verse. on this classifier, which you will find on plate x, the very same italic letters that you saw in plate ix have been arranged so that all the _a_ form letters are above the shaded part and all the _b_ form letters below. now if you will tear out this whole page and carefully cut out these shaded parts you can place this page over the lines of the poem in italic letters. this will help you to decide to which form the letters of the poem belong. place the classifier over the poem so that the first letter, the capital =h= of _have_, is between the _a_ form and the _b_ form capital =h= on the classifier. you will see that this capital =h= of _have_ is the _a_ form. now below the classifier has been placed something which will help you still more. all the words of the poem have been divided and have been placed into groups of five letters. as we decided that the =h= of _have_ belongs to the _a_ form, we have placed an _a_ beneath the =h= in the first group of five letters. now move the classifier so that the =a= in _have_ comes between the _a_ form =a= and the _b_ form =a= on the classifier. you will see that this letter also belongs to the _a_ form. if you will do the same to the rest of the letters of this first group you will find that they are all _a_ form letters. now what letter of the alphabet does a group of five _a_'s stand for?--=a=, does it not? so the first letter in our secret is =a=. now place the classifier over the rest of the letters of the poem and see to what form they belong, just as we have done for you in the first group. if you do your work carefully you will find the hidden secret. if we can hide one word in "_biliteral cipher_" and a sentence in a short poem, do you not see how a whole story could be hidden so carefully within a book that it might not be discovered for many, many years? helen louise ricketts [illustration: plate i alphabet by albert dÃ�rer (a. d. )] [illustration: plate ii construction of alphabet] [illustration: plate iii alphabet, with construction: a. dÃ�rer (a. d. )] [illustration: plate iv alphabet, with construction: a. dÃ�rer (a. d. )] [illustration: plate v alphabet, with construction: a. dÃ�rer (a. d. )] [illustration: plate vi alphabet, with construction: a. dÃ�rer (a. d. )] [illustration: plate vii alphabet, with construction: a. dÃ�rer (a. d. )] [illustration: plate viii have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, learn more than thou trowest, set less than thou throwest. --shakespeare. ] [illustration: plate ix italic alphabet, by francisco lucas roman alphabet, by francisco lucas] [illustration: plate x the bi-formed alphabet classifier for use with the lucas alphabets, _a_ forms above the shaded parts, _b_ forms below copyrighted, . george fabyan cut out shaded part with sharp knife transcription havem oreth antho ushow estsp eakle sstha nthou knowe aaaaa a stlen dless thant houow estle arnmo retha nthou trowe stset lesst hanth outhr owest shake spear e] transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. provided by the internet archive [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] the shakespeare myth by edwin durning-lawrence, halliwell-phillipps says: "it was not till the jubilee of that the tendency to the fabrication of shakespeare anecdotes and relics at stratford museum became manifest. all kinds of deception have since been practised there." the folio of the plays, . |it is now universally admitted that the plays known as shakespeare's are the greatest "birth of time," the most wonderful product of the human mind which the world has ever seen, that they evince the ripest classical scholarship, the most perfect knowledge of law, and the most intimate acquaintance with all the intricacies of the highest court life. the plays as we know them, appeared in the folio, published in , seven years after shakespeare's death in . this volume contains thirty-six plays. of this number only eight are substantially in the form in which they were printed in shakespeare's lifetime. six are greatly improved. five are practically rewritten, and seventeen are not known to have been printed before shakespeare's death, although thirteen plays of similar names are registered or in some way referred to. the following particulars are mainly derived from reed's "bacon our shakespeare," published . the spelling of the first folio of has, however, been strictly followed. the eight which are printed in the folio substantially as they originally appeared in the quartos are:-- . much ado about nothing. . loves labour lost. * . midsommer nights dreame. . the merchant of venice. . the first part of king henry the fourth. . the second part of k. henry the fourth. . romeo and juliet. . the tragedie of troylus and cressida. ** * note.--the scene of the play is navarre and one of the characters is biron. a passport given to bacon's brother anthony in from the court of navarre, is signed "biron." (british museum add. ms. ). ** note.--this has a new title and a prologue in the folio. this extremely learned play which we are told was "never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger.... or sullied with the smoaky breath of the multitude," has recently been shewn by mrs. hinton stewart to be a satire upon the court of king james i. the six which have been greatly improved are:-- . the life & death of richard the second. corrections throughout. . the third part of king henry the sixt. new title, new lines, and many old lines retouched. . the life & death of richard the third. new lines added, , lines retouched. . titus andronicus. one entire new scene added. . the tragedy of hamlet. many important additions and omissions. . king lear. new lines, lines retouched. the five which have been practically rewritten are:-- . the merry wives of windsor. , new lines, the text rewritten. . the taming of the shrew. new title, , new lines added, and extensive revision. . the life and death of king john. new title, , new lines including one entire new scene. the dialogue rewritten. . the life of king henry the fift. new title, the choruses and two new scenes added. text nearly doubled in length. . the second part of king hen. the sixt. new title, , new lines, and , old lines retouched. [the practice of false-dating books of the elizabethan period was not uncommon, instances of as much as thirty years having been discovered. it has been proved by mr. a. w. pollard, of the british museum; by mr. w. w. greg, librarian of trinity college, cambridge; and by prof. w. j. neidig, that four of these, viz., "a midsommer nights dreame," and "the merchant of venice," both dated , and "king lear," and "henry the fift," both dated , were in fact printed in , three years after shakespeare's death.] the thirteen which seem not to have been printed before shakespeare's death, although plays of somewhat similar names are registered or in some way referred to, are:-- . the tempest. . the first part of king henry the sixt. . the two gentlemen of verona. . measure for measure. . the comedy of errours. . as you like it. . all is well, that ends well. . twelfe-night, or what you will. . the winters tale. . the life and death of julius cæsar. . the tragedy of macbeth. . anthony and cleopater. . cymbeline king of britaine. the four which seem neither to have been printed nor referred to till after shakespeare's death are:-- * . the life of king henry the eight. . the tragedy of coriolanus. . timon of athens. . othello, the moore of venice. of the above plays, most of those which were printed in shakespeare's lifetime originally appeared anonymously; indeed, no play bore shakespeare's name until new place, stratford-on-avon, had been purchased for him and £ , given to him in . the first play to bear the name of w. shakespere was loves labors lost, which appeared in the following year-- . * note.--the above very strongly confirms mrs. gallup's reading of the cypher, viz.: that there are twenty-two new plays in the folio. the tempest, with timon of athens and henry viii., seems to be largely concerned with the story of bacon's fall from his high offices in , and emile montégut, writing in the "revue des deux mondes" of august, , says that the tempest is evidently the author's literary testament. stratford, to which shakespeare was sent in , was at that period much farther from london for all practical purposes than canada is to-day, and shakespeare did not go there for week ends, but he permanently resided there, only very occasionally visiting london, when he lodged at silver street with a hairdresser named mountjoy. it is exceedingly important and informing to remember that shakespeare's name never appeared upon any play until he had been permanently sent away from london, and that his wealth was simply the money--£ , --given to him in order to induce him to incur the risk entailed by allowing his name to appear upon the plays. such risk was by no means inconsiderable, because queen elizabeth was determined to punish the author of richard the second, a play which greatly incensed her; she is reported to have said, "seest thou not that i am richard the second?" there is no evidence that shakespeare ever earned so much as ten shillings in any one week while he lived in london. at stratford, shakespeare sold corn, malt, etc., and lent small sums of money, and indeed, was nothing more than a petty tradesman, a fact of which we are quite clearly informed in "the great assises holden at parnassus," printed in , where bacon is put as "chancellor of parnassus," i.e., greatest of the world's poets, and shakespeare appears as "the writer of weekly accounts." this means that the only literature for which shakespeare was responsible consisted of his small tradesman's accounts sent out weekly by his clerk; because, as will be shewn presently, <b>shakespeare was totally unable to write a single letter of his own name.</b> let us now return to the folio of shakespeare's plays, published in . on the title page appears a large half-length figure drawn by martin droeshout, which is known as the authentic (i.e., the authorised) portrait of shakespeare. martin droeshout, i should perhaps mention, is scarcely likely to have ever seen shakespeare, as he was only years of age when shakespeare died. on the cover of this pamphlet will be found a reduced facsimile of the title page of the folio of . it is almost inconceivable that people with eyes to see should have looked at this so-called portrait for years without perceiving that it consists of a ridiculous, "putty-faced mask," fixed upon a stuffed dummy clothed in a trick coat. * * note.--this stuffed dummy is surmounted by a mask with an ear attached to it not in the least resembling any possible human ear, because, instead of being hollowed, it is rounded out something like the back side of a shoehorn, so as to form a sort of cup to cover and conceal any real ear that might be behind it. the "tailor and cutter" newspaper, in its issue of th march, , stated that the figure, put for shakespeare, in the folio, was undoubtedly clothed in an impossible coat composed of the back and the front of the same left arm. and in the following april the "gentleman's tailor magazine," under the heading of a "problem for the trade," prints the two halves of the coat put tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, as shewn here on page , and says:-- "it is passing strange that something like three centuries should have been allowed to elapse before the tailor's handiwork should have been appealed to in this particular manner. "the special point is that in what is known as the authentic portrait of william shakespeare, which appears in the celebrated first folio edition, published in , a remarkable sartorial puzzle is apparent. "the tunic, coat, or whatever the garment may have been called at the time, is so strangely illustrated that the right-hand side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the back part; and so gives a harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional, and done with express object and purpose. "anyhow, it is pretty safe to say that if a referendum of the trade was taken on the question whether the two illustrations shown above [exactly as our illustration on page ] represent the foreparts of the same garment, the polling would give an unanimous vote in the negative." facing the title page of the first folio of the plays, on which the stuffed and masked dummy appears, is the following description (of which i give a photo-facsimile), which, as it is signed b. i., is usually ascribed to ben jonson:--= `````to the reader. ```this figure, that thou here seest pur, ````it was for gentle shackspeare cut; ```wherein the grauer had a strife ````with nature, to out-doo the life: ```o, could he but haue drawne his wit ````as well in brasse, as he hath hit ```his face, the print would then surpasse ````all, that was cuer writ in brasse. ```but, since he cannot, reader, lookc ````not on his picture, but his booke. `````b.i.= [illustration: ] if my readers will count all the letters in the above, including the four v's, which are used instead of the two w's, they will find that there are letters, a masonic number often repeated throughout the folio. my book, "bacon is shakespeare," was published in (i.e., years after ), and tells for the first time the true meaning of these lines. b. i. never calls the ridiculous dummy a portrait, but describes it as "the figure," "put for" (i.e., instead of), and as "the print," and as "his picture," and he distinctly tells us to look not at his (ridiculous) picture, but (only) at his booke. it has always been a puzzle to students who read these verses why b. i. lavished such extravagant praise upon what looks so stiff and wooden a figure, about which gainsborough, writing in , says: "damn the original picture of him... for i think a stupider face i never beheld except d... k's... it is impossible that such a mind and ray of heaven, could shine with such a face and pair of eyes." to those capable of properly reading the lines, b. i. clearly tells the whole story. he says, "the graver had a strife with nature to out-doo the life." in the new english dictionary, edited by sir james murray, we find more than six hundred words beginning with "out." every one of these, with scarcely an exception, must, in order to be fully understood, be read reversed; outfit is fit out, outfall is fall out, outburst is burst out, etc. outlaw does not mean outside the law, but lawed out by some legal process. "out-doo" therefore must here mean "do out," and was continually used for hundreds of years in that sense. thus in the "cursor mundi," written in the thirteenth century, we read that adam was "out-done" [of paradise]. in drayton published his "barons' wars," and in book v. s. li. we read, ````for he his foe not able to withstand, ````was ta'en in battle and his eyes out-done. b. i. therefore tells us that the graver has done out the life, that is, covered it up and masked it. the graver has done this so cleverly that for years (i.e., from till ) learned pedants and others have looked at the dummy without perceiving the trick that had been played upon them. b. i. then proceeds to say:--"o, could he but have drawne his wit as well in brasse, as he hath hit his face." hit, at that period, was often used as the past participle of hide, with the meaning hid or hidden, exactly as we find in chaucer, in "the squieres tale," where we read, ii. , etc.,= ```right as a serpent hit him under floures ```til he may seen his tyme for to byte.= this, put into modern english prose, means, just as a serpent hid himself under the flowers until he might see his time to bite. i have already explained how b. i. tells the reader not to look at the picture, but at the book; perhaps the matter may be still more clear if i give a paraphrase of the verses.= `````to the reader. ```the dummy that thou seest set here ```was put instead of shake-a-speare; ```wherein the graver had a strife ```to extinguish all of nature's life. ```o, could he but have drawn his mind ```as well as he's concealed behind ```his face; the print would then surpasse ```all, that was ever writ in brasse. ```but since he cannot, do not looke ```on his mask'd picture, but his booke.= "do out" appears as the name of the little instrument something like a pair of snuffers, called a "douter," which was formerly used to extinguish candles. therefore, i have correctly substituted "extinguish" for "out-do." at the beginning i have substituted "dummy" for "figure" because we are told that the figure is "put for" (that is, put instead of) shakespeare. "wit" in these lines means absolutely the same as "mind" which i have used in its place, because i feel sure that it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of bacon in his eighteenth year, painted by hilliard in , we read:--"si tabula daretur digna animum mallem," the translation of which is--"if one could but paint his mind!" this important fact which can neither be disputed nor explained away, viz., that the figure upon the title page of the first folio of the plays in put to represent shakespeare is a doubly left-armed and stuffed dummy, surmounted by a ridiculous putty-faced mask, disposes once and for all of any idea that the mighty plays were written by the drunken, illiterate clown of stratford-on-avon, and shows us quite clearly that the name "shakespeare" was used as a left-hand, a pseudonym, behind which the great author, francis bacon, wrote securely concealed. in his last prayer, bacon says, "i have though in a despised weed procured the good of all men," while in the th "shakespeare" sonnet he says:-- ```why write i still all one, ever the same, ```and keepe invention in a noted weed. ```that every word doth almost sel my name ```shewing their birth, and where they did proceed. weed signifies disguise, and is used in that sense by bacon in his "henry vii.," where he says, "this fellow... clad himself like an hermite and in that weede wandered about the countrie." it is doubtful if at that period it was possible to discover a meaner disguise, a more "despised weed," than the pseudonym of william shakespeare, of stratford-on-avon, gentleman. bacon also specially refers to his own great "_descent_ to the good of mankind" in the wonderful prayer which is evidently his dedication of the "immortal plays."= ```this is the form and rule of our `````alphabet ```may god, the creator, preserver, and renewer of the universe, ``protect and govern this work, both in its ascent to his glory, and ``in its descent to the good of mankind, for the sake of his mercy ``and good will to men, through his only son (immanuel). _god `` us._= in the "promus," which is the name of bacon's notebook now in the mss. department of the british museum, bacon tells us that "tragedies and comedies are made of one alphabet." his beautiful prayer, described as the form and rule of our alphabet, was first published in in "certaine genuine remains of sir francis bacon, baron of verulam and viscount st. albans," where it appears as a fragment of a book written by the lord verulam and entituled, "the alphabet of nature." in the preface we are told that this work is commonly said to be lost. "the alphabet of nature" is, of course, "the immortal plays," known to us as shakespeare's, which hold "the mirror up to nature," and are now no longer lost, but restored to their great author, francis bacon. bacon shewn by contemporary title pages to be the author of the shakespeare plays. |i have shewn on pp. to that the title page of the folio of the plays known as shakespeare's is adorned with a supposed portrait of shakespeare, which is, in fact, a putty-faced mask supported on a stuffed dummy wearing a coat with two left arms, to inform us that the stratford clown was a "left-hand," a "dummy," a "pseudonym," behind which the great author was securely concealed. this fact disposes once and for all of the shakespeare myth, and i will now proceed to prove by a few contemporary evidences that the real author was francis bacon. i place before the reader on page a photographically enlarged copy of the engraved title page of bacon's work, the de augmentis, which was published in holland in . "de augmentis" is the latin name for the work which appeared in english as the advancement of learning. this same engraved title page was for more than one hundred years used for the title page of vol. i. of various editions of bacon's collected works in latin, which were printed abroad. the same subject, but entirely redrawn, was also employed for other foreign editions of the de augmentis, but nothing in any way resembling it was printed in england until quite recently, when photo-facsimile copies were made of it for the purpose of discussing the authorship of the "shakespeare" plays. in this title page we see in the foreground on the right of the picture (the reader's left) bacon seated with his right hand in brightest light resting upon an open book beneath which is a second book (shall we venture to say that these are the de augmentis and the novum organum?), while with his left-hand in deepest shadow, bacon is putting forward a mean man, who appears to the careless observer to be running away with a third book. let us examine carefully this man. we shall then perceive that he is clothed in a goat skin. the word tragedy is derived from the greek word tragodos, which means an actor dressed in a goat skin. we should also notice that the man wears a false breast to enable him to represent a woman; there were no women actors at the time of shakespeare's plays. the man, therefore, is intended to represent the tragic muse. with his left hand, and with his left hand only, he grips strongly a clasped sealed, concealed book, which by the crossed lines upon its side (then, as now, the symbol of a mirror) is shewn to be the "mirror up to nature," the "book of the immortal plays," known to us under the name of shakespeare, which, together with bacon's de augmentis and his novum organum, makes up the "great instauration," by which bacon has "procured the good of all men." [illustration: ] having very carefully considered this plate of the title page of the de augmentis, , let us next examine the plate on page , which is the title page that forms the frontispiece of bacon's henry vii. in the latin edition, printed in holland in . this forms, with the edition of the de augmentis, one of the series of bacon's collected works which were continually reprinted for upwards of a hundred years. in this title page of henry vii. we see the same "left-handed" story most emphatically repeated. on the right of the engraving--the reader's left--upon the higher level, francis bacon stands in the garb of a philosopher with grand rosicrucian rosettes upon his shoes. by his side is a knight in full armour, who, like himself, touches the figure with his right hand. on the "left" side of the picture upon the _lower level_ we see that the same francis bacon, who is now wearing _actor's boots_, is stopping the wheel with the shaft of a spear which, the "left-handed" actor grasps (or shall we say "shakes"), while with his "left hand" he points to the globe. this actor wears one spur only, and that upon his "left" boot, and his sword is also girded upon him "left-handedly." above this "left-handed" actor's head, upon the wheel which the figure is turning with her "left" hand, we see the emblems of the plays; the mirror up to nature (observe the crossed lines to which we called attention in reference to the crossed lines upon the book in the title page of the de augmentis, )--the rod for the back of fools--"the bason that receives your guilty blood" (see titus andronicus v. ) which is here the symbol for tragedy,--and the fool's rattle or bauble. that the man is not a knight, but is intended to represent an actor, is manifest from his wearing actor's boots, a collar of lace, and leggings trimmed with lace, and having his sword girded on the wrong side, while he wears but one gauntlet and that upon his "left" hand. that he is a shake-speare actor is also evident because he is shaking the spear which is held by bacon. he is likewise a shake-spur actor, as is shewn by his wearing one spur only, which is upon his "left" boot. in other emblematic writings and pictures we similarly get "shake-spur," meaning "shake-speare." the reader cannot fail to remark how perpetually it is shewn that everything connected with the plays is performed "left-handedly," that is, "underhandedly" and "secretly in shadow." on the right-hand side upon the higher level the figure with her right hand holds above bacon's head a salt box. this is in order to teach us that bacon was the "wisest of mankind," because we are plainly told in the "continuation of bacon's new atlantis" (which was published in , but of which the author who is called "r. h., esq.," has never been identified) that in "our heraldry" (which refers to the symbolic drawings that appear mostly as the frontispieces of certain books such as those before the reader) "if for wisdom she (the virgin) holds a salt." but the reader will perceive that in her right hand she also holds something else above bacon's head. [illustration: ] only a considerable knowledge of emblems and emblem books enables me to inform my readers what this very curious object represents. it is absolutely certain that what she holds above bacon's head is a "bridle without a bit," which is here put for the purpose of instructing us that the future age is not to curb and muzzle and destroy bacon's reputation. this emblem tells us that, as the ages roll on, bacon will be unmuzzled and crowned with everlasting fame. how do we know so much as this? in february, , the first edition of the most important of all emblem books, viz., "alciati's emblems," was published, and in that book there is shewn a hideous figure of nemesis holding a bridle in which is a tremendous "bit" to destroy "improba verba," false reputations. a little more than a hundred years later, viz., in , baudoin, who had translated bacon's essays into french, also published a book of emblems, a task which, he tells us in the preface, he was induced to undertake by "alciat" (printed in small letters) and by bacon (printed in capital letters). in this book of emblems baudoin puts opposite to bacon's name a fine engraving of nemesis, but which is, in fact, a figure of fame holding a "bridle without a bit," of exactly the same shape as that shewn in the title page of "henry vii.," which is now under the reader's eyes. i may perhaps here state that i possess books that must have belonged to a distinguished rosicrucian who was well acquainted with bacon's secrets, and that in my library there is a specially printed copy of baudoin's book in which this figure of fame that is put as the nemesis for bacon, is purposefully printed upside down; i do not mean bound upside down, but printed upside down, the printing on the back being reversed and so reading correctly. other books which i possess have portions similarly purposefully printed upside down to afford revelations of bacon's authorship to those readers who are capable of understanding symbols. this particular upside down drawing of the nemesis placed opposite to bacon's name in baudoin's book is so printed in order to emphasise the author's meaning that the nemesis for bacon is to unmuzzle him and spread his fame over all the world. this "specially printed" copy of baudoin's book is also "specially bound"--in contemporary binding--with rosicrucian emblems on the back. the figure which turns the wheel turns it with her "left" hand, while with her right hand she holds over bacon's head what the reader now knows to be the emblems of wisdom and of fame. streaming from her head is a long lock of hair which is correctly described as "the forelock of time," and this is to teach us that as time goes on so will bacon's reputation continually extend farther and farther. bacon in his will declared that he bequeathed his "name and memory... to foreign nations and the next ages." * bacon knew that much time must elapse before the world would begin to recognise how much he had done for its advancement, and there is considerable evidence that he fixed upon the year , which is years after the year , in which the folio edition of the immortal plays, known as shakespeare's, first appeared. * note.--the following story, related by ben jonson himself, shows how necessary it was for bacon to conceal his identity behind various' masks:--"he [ben jonson] was dilated by sir james murray to the king, for writing something against the scots, in a play eastward hoe, and voluntarly imprissonned himself with chapman and marston who had written it amongst them. the report, was that they should then [have] had their ears cut and noses. after their delivery, he banqueted all his friends; there was camden, selden, and others; at the midst of the feast his old mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his drinke, which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no churle, she told, she was minded first to have drunk of it herself." this was in , and it is a strange and grim illustration of the dangers that beset men in the highway of letters. with respect to bacon's remarkable reference to foreign nations, we must remember that the title pages here shown and numerous other striking revelations of his authorship of the plays were never printed or published in england, but appear only in editions printed in foreign countries. i will once more repeat that the title page of the "de augmentis" clearly tells us that bacon has secretly with his "left hand" placed his great work, the "immortal plays," "the mirror up to nature," in the hands of a mean actor, and that the title page of "henry vii." repeats the same "lefthanded" story, and tells us that, while the history of henry vii. is written in prose in bacon's own name, his other histories of the "kings of england" are set forth at the globe theatre by the shakespeare actor, concealed behind whom bacon stands secure. in other words, that bacon's other histories of england will be found in the plays to which is attached the name of his pseudonym, the doubly "lefthanded" and masked dummy, "william shakespeare." the shakespeare signatures (so-called). |no scrap of writing is in existence which can by any possibility be supposed to have been written by william shakespeare, excepting only the six (so-called) signatures. and, since every one of these supposed signatures is undoubtedly written by a law clerk, the inference that william shakespeare, of stratford-upon-avon, gentleman, was totally unable to write, seems to be incontrovertible. the first so-called signature in the order of date is the one last discovered, viz.: that at the record office, london. this is attached to "answers to interrogatories," dated may th, , in a petty lawsuit, in which it appeared that william shakespeare, of stratford-upon-avon, gentleman, had occasionally lodged in silver street at the house of a hairdresser named mountjoy. among the "answers to interrogatories" those which were signed very carefully by daniell nicholas, and the "answers to interrogatories" from william shakespeare, of stratford-upon-avon, gentleman, which are dated may th, , are both written in the handwriting of the same law clerk, who attached to the latter the name "wilm shaxpr" over a neat blot, which was probably the mark made by the illiterate "gentleman" of stratford, who was totally unable to write even a single letter of his own name. to those acquainted with the law script of the period it is abundantly evident that the "wilm shaxpr" is in the same handwriting as the body of the answers. the next (so-called) signatures in order of date are upon the purchase deed now in the london guildhall library, and upon the mortgage deed of the same property, which is in the british museum. the purchase deed is dated march th, , and the mortgage deed is dated march th, , but at that period, as at the present time, when part of the purchase money is left on mortgage, the mortgage deed was always dated one day after the purchase deed, and always signed one moment before it, because the owner cannot part with his property before he receives both the cash and the mortgage deed. about twenty-five years ago, i succeeded in persuading the city authorities to carry the purchase deed to the british museum, where by appointment we met the officials there, who took the mortgage deed out of the show-case and placed it side by side with the purchase deed from guildhall. after a long and careful examination of the two deeds, some dozen or twenty officials standing around, everyone agreed that neither of the names of william shakespeare upon the deeds could be supposed to be signatures. recently one of the higher officials of the british museum wrote to me about the matter, and in reply i wrote to him and also to the new librarian of guildhall that it would be impossible to discover a scoundrel who would venture to swear that it was even remotely possible that these two supposed signatures of william shakespeare could have been written at the same time, in the same place, with the same pen, and the same ink, by the same hand. they are widely different, one having been written by the law clerk of the seller, the other by the law clerk of the purchaser. one of the so-called signatures is evidently written by an old man, the other is written by a young man. the deeds are not stated to be signed but only to be sealed. next we come to the three supposed signatures upon the will, dated march th, . twenty or twenty-five years ago, on several occasions i examined with powerful glasses shakespeare's will at somerset house, where for my convenience it was placed in a strong light, and i arrived at the only possible conclusion, viz., that the supposed signatures were all written by the law clerk who wrote the body of the will, and who wrote also the names of the witnesses, all of which, excepting his own which is written in a neat modern looking hand, are in the same handwriting as the will itself. the fact that shakespeare's name is written by the law clerk has been conclusively proved by magdalene thumm-kintzel in the leipzig magazine, "der menschenkenner," of january, , in which photo reproductions of certain letters in the body of the will and in the so-called signatures are placed side by side, and the evidence is conclusive that they are written by the same hand. moreover, the will was originally drawn to be sealed, because the solicitor must have known that the illiterate householder of stratford was unable to write his name. subsequently, however, the word "seale" appears to have been struck out and the word "hand" written over it. people unacquainted with the rules of law are generally not aware that anyone can, by request, "sign" any person's name to any legal document, and that if such person touch it and acknowledge it, anyone can sign as witness to his signature. moreover the will is not stated to be signed, but only stated to be "published." in putting the name of william shakespeare three times to the will the law clerk seems to have taken considerable care to show that they were not real signatures. they are all written in law script, and the three "w's" of "william" are made in the three totally different forms in which "w's" were written in the law script of that period. excepting the "w" the whole of the first so-called signature is almost illegible, but the other two are quite clear, and show that the clerk has purposefully formed each and every letter in the two names "shakespeare" in a different manner one from the other. it is, therefore, impossible for anyone to suppose that the three names upon the will are "signatures." i should perhaps add that all the six so-called signatures were written by law clerks who were excellent penmen, and that the notion that the so-called signatures are badly written has only arisen from the fact that the general public, and even many educated persons, are totally ignorant of the appearance of the law script of the period. the first of the so-called signatures, viz., that at the record office, london, is written with extreme ease and rapidity. thus are for ever disproved each and every one of the writings hitherto claimed as "signatures" of william shakespeare, and as there is not in existence any other writing which can be supposed to be from his pen, it seems an indisputable fact that he was totally unable to write. there is also very strong evidence that he was likewise unable to read. bacon signed the shakespeare plays. |a careful examination of the first folio of "mr. william shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies," , which are generally known as "the plays of shakespeare," will prove that bacon signed the plays in very many ways. i will place a few examples before my readers, and when they have carefully studied these they may perhaps (if they can get access to a photographic facsimile copy of the first folio of shakespeare's plays, ), be able to discover additional traces of the great author's hand. for reasons which it is not now necessary to discuss, bacon selected as one of the keys to the mystery of his authorship of various works the number . the great folio of the plays of is divided into comedies, histories, and tragedies. each of these, although they are all bound in one volume, is separately paged. it follows therefore, that there must be three pages numbered in the folio volume of shakespeare's plays. i must also inform my readers that every page is divided into two columns, and it is absolutely certain that the author himself so arranged these that he knew in what column and in what line in such column every word would appear in the printed page. let us examine, in the first instance,= ````the first page = in the plays. the second column of this page commences with the first scene of the fourth act of the "merry wives of windsor" in this act a welsh schoolmaster, "evans," "dame quickly," and a boy named "william" appear. the object of the introduction of the welshman seems to have been that he might mispronounce "c" as "g," and so call "hic" "hig," and "hoc" "hog." william also is made wrongly to say that the accusative case is "hinc" instead of "hunc," and evans, the welsh schoolmaster, who should have corrected this error made by the boy, repeats the blunder with the change of "c" into "g," so as to give without confusion the right signature key-words which appear in the second column of the first page , as follow:-- _eva_. i pray you have your remembrance (childe) _accusative_, king, hang, hog. * * note.--in the folio ac-cusativo king, hang, hog are in italics as here printed. _qu_. hang-hog, is latten for bacon, i warrant you. observe that "bacon" is spelled with a capital "b," and also note that in this way we are told quite clearly that hang-hog means bacon. in very numerous instances a hog with a halter (a rope with a slip-knot) round its neck appears as part of some engraving in some book to which bacon's name has not yet been publicly attached. i shall again refer to "hang-hog" as we proceed. next, let us carefully examine= ````the second page = in the folio of the plays, which in the first column contains the commencement of the first scene of the second act of the first part of "king henry the fourth." two carriers are conversing, and we read:-- _car_. what ostler, come away, and be hangd; come away. _car_. i have a gammon of bacon, and two razes of ginger, to be delivered as farre as charing-crosse. observe that gammon is spelled with a capital "g," and bacon also is spelled with a capital "b." thus we have found bacon in the second page . but i must not forget to inform my readers that this second page is really and evidently of set purpose falsely numbered , because page is immediately followed by , there being no page numbered or in the histories, the second part of the plays. having found what appears to be a revelation in each of the first two pages numbered in the first folio, we must remember that a baconian revelation, in order to be complete, satisfactory, and certain, requires to be repeated "three" times. the uninitiated inquirer will not be able to perceive upon the third page , on which is found the beginning of "the tragedie of romeo and juliet," any trace of bacon, or hog or pig, or anything suggesting such things. the initiated will know that the great "master-mason" will supply two visible pillars, but that the third pillar will be the invisible pillar, the shibboleth; therefore, the informed will not expect to find the third key upon the visible page , but upon= ````the invisible page .= most of my readers will not fail to perceive that the invisible page must be the page that is , when we count not from the beginning, but from the end of the book of tragedies, that is, from the end of the volume. the last page in the folio is . this is falsely numbered , not by accident or by a misprint, but (as the great cryptographic book, by gustavus selenus [the man in the moon], published in , will tell those who are able to read it) because forms the word "baconus," a signature of bacon. let me repeat that the last page of the great folio of the plays is page , and deducting from we obtain the number , which is = ````the page from the end.= on this page, , in the first column, we find part of "the tragedie of anthony and cleopatra," and we there read, _enobar_. or if you borrow one another's love for the instant, you may when you heare no more words of _pompey_ returne it againe: you shall have time to wrangle in, when you have nothing else to do. _ anth_. thou art a souldier, onely speake no more. _enob_. that trueth should be silent, i had almost forgot. now here we perceive that "pompey," "in," and "got," by the manner in which the type is arranged in the column, come directly under each other, and their initial letters being p. i. g., we quite easily read "pig," which is what we were looking for. but on this "invisible" page , in which the key-word is found, other very important revelations may also be discovered, because it is the "shibboleth" page. if we count the headline title and all the lines that come to the left-hand edge of the column on this page , we find that "pompey" which begins the word, "pig" is upon= ``the rd line. (example .)= bacon very frequently signed with some form of cypher the first page of his secret books. let us, then, look at the first page of the great folio of , on which is the commencement of the play of "the tempest." in the first column of that first page we shall read= ``is perfect gallowes: stand fast good fate to his han ``ging, make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our ``owne doth little advantage: if he be not borne to bee ``hang'd, our case is miserable.= here, reading upwards from hang'd, we read hang'd, h. o. g., the "h" of hang'd being twice used. and just as "_pompey"_ the commencement of pig, is upon the rd line of page (the invisible page ), so here on page the commencing word "hang'd" is also upon= ```the rd line (example .)= counting all the lines without exception, including as before the head-line titles. observe, that it is only made possible for us to read "hang'd hog," because by the printer's "error" hanging is divided improperly as han-ging instead of hang-ing. this apparent misprint is a most careful arrangement made by the great author himself. i must once again repeat that there are no misprints or errors in the first folio, , because the great author was alive, and most carefully arranged every column in every page, and every word in every column, so that we should find every word exactly where we do find such particular word. hang'd hog is, therefore, clearly the signature of the great author upon the first page of the folio, just as is his signature upon the last page of the folio. but, as i have already said, in order to obtain a full, certain and complete revelation we must discover a third example. this we shall find in the second column of ```the first page . (example .)= wherein is the first scene of the second act of "the merry wives of windsor," where we read as follows:-- _mis. page_. what's the matter, woman? _mi. ford_. o woman: if it were not for one trifling respect, i could come to such honour. _mi. page_. hang the trifle (woman) take the honour. here, reading the initial letters of each line upwards from "hang," we get quite clearly s. o. w., and we perceive that "hang sow" is just as much bacon as is hang hog. thus, we get a triplet of no. , as we had a triplet of page , but we should also realise that we get a third triplet, because we find= ```hang hog (example .)= on page one in the comedies, the first portion of the plays, and we find= ```hang sow (example .)= which is practically the same thing as hang hog, upon page in the comedies, the first portion of the plays, and we find that= ```hang-hog is latten for bacon (example .)= is on page in the comedies, the first portion of the plays, and "hang-hog is bacon," gives the shibboleth, and affords the explanation of the two previous examples. thus we have a revelation of bacon's authorship in "three times three" forms, and the revelation is, therefore, "absolutely perfect."= `````the number .= there are thirty-six plays in the first folio. this is not accidental. thirty-six is a cabalistic number, and is used in several of bacon's works when he refers to the stage or to plays.= `````the th essay,= in the italian edition of bacon's "essays," published in london, in , is entitled "fattioni" (stage plays).= ````the th antitheta.= in the latin edition of bacon's "advancement of learning," published in , the same year in which the folio of the plays appeared, the xxxvi. antitheta commences "amorum multa debet scena (stage plays)," and when the english edition was brought out in , the xxxvi. antitheta commences with the word "the stage."= ````the th apophthegm.= in the collection of bacon's "apophthegms," printed in , apophthegm reads as follows, and fully explains the meaning of "hang-hog is latten for bacon, i warrant you." "sir _nicholas bacon_, being appointed a judge for the northern circuit, and having brought his trials that came before him to such a pass, as the passing of sentence on malefactors, he was by one of the malefactors mightily importuned for to save his life, which when nothing that he had said did avail, he at length desired his mercy on the account of kindred: prethee said my lord judge, how came that in? why, if it please you my lord, your name is _bacon_ and mine is _hog_, and in all ages _hog_ and _bacon_ have been so near kindred, that they are not to be separated. i [aye], _but_, replyed judge _bacon, you and i cannot be kindred except you be hanged; for hog is not bacon until it be well hanged_."= ````page .= at an early date bacon selected the number " " to give in numerous books revelations concerning his authorship. in florio's "second frutes," published in , on page we read:--= ``h. a slice of bacon, would make us taste this wine well. ``s. what ho, set that gammon of bakon upon the board.= florio was always a servant of bacon's, and received a pension for "making my lord's works known abroad." the above is inserted on page to inform us that bacon's name may be spelled in many different ways, as students of various books will find to be the fact. in the "mikrokosmos," * of which editions both in latin and in french were published at antwerp in , we find on page a picture of circe's island, which the intelligent reader will perceive represents "the stage." beneath it are the words from proverbs ix. , which in our english authorised version read, "stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." examining this engraving, we perceive in the forefront bacon's boar, drawn exactly as it is heraldically portrayed in bacon's crest, but with a man's head surmounted by a "cap of liberty," and we should remember the words in shakespeare's play, "as you like it" (which means'"wisdom from the mouth of a clown"): "i must have liberty:... to blow on whom i please, for so fools have... invest me in my motley: give me leave to speak my mind, and i will through and through cleanse the foule bodie of th' infected world, if they will patiently receive my medicine." * note.--the title page is headed with the figure of a chameleon, which forms the " rd" of "alciati's emblems." the chameleon was supposed to assume various appearances, and is therefore used as an emblem for bacon, who assumed numerous masks in order to do good to all mankind, though in a despised weed." in bacon's "advancement of learning," , first edition in english, we find a first page " ." in the margin of this page we find "alexand": (bacon sometimes alluded to himself as alexander). but the page is misnumbered " ," and on this second and false page " " we read in the margin= `````s. fran `````bacon,= all in capital letters, almost the only marginal capital letters in the whole of the book, which is bacon's own book, and yet has this striking reference to himself on the false page " ." the number of pages " " (very frequently falsely paged " "), in which some reference to bacon or to the plays may be discovered, is very large. i will, however, now quote only two other instances. in , the third edition of shakespeare's plays, containing seven extra plays, was issued, and the editors, in order to mislead the initiated and pretend that they had bacon's authority for so adding some of his inferior plays to his revised selection of the thirty-six plays which formed the great folio of , numbered two pages , which they placed opposite to each other, and on each of these we find "s. albans" (bacon was viscount s. albans). in , the fifth edition was published by nicholas rowe, and in that edition there is a proper page , and also is misprinted (the only mispagination in the whole book of , pages), and this is made in the false page in order to afford a revelation if we carefully read both pages " " together. the northumberland manuscripts. |on page is shewn a type transcript of the cover or outside page of a collection of manuscripts in the possession of the duke of northumberland, which were discovered at northumberland house in london in three years later, viz.., in , james spedding published a thin little volume entituled "a conference of pleasure," in which he printed a full size facsimile of the original of the outside page, which is here reproduced in modern script on page . he also gave a few particulars of the mss. themselves. in , mr. frank j. burgoyne brought out a collotype facsimile of every page that now remains of the collection of mss. in an edition limited to copies, in a fine royal quarto at the price of £ s. each. of the mss. mentioned on the cover, nine only now remain, and of these, six are certainly by francis bacon; the first being written by him for a masque or "fanciful devise," which mr. spedding thinks was presented at the court of elizabeth in . the reader's attention is directed to this masque, which consists of "the praise of the worthiest vertue, &c," lower down we read: "speaches for my lord of essex at the tylt," "speach for my lord of sussex tilt," "orations at graies inne revells." we must remember that in numerous instances when masques were presented, reference is made to bacon having in some way countenanced them or assisted them by taking part in the arrangement of the "dumb shew." this teaches us how familiar bacon was with stage presentations. [illustration: ] further down on the page we find "rychard the second" and "rychard the third." mr. spedding declared himself satisfied that these were the (so-called) shakespeare plays. immediately above, we read "william shakespeare," which appears to be part of the original writing upon the page. it is not necessary here to refer to the remainder of these original writings, but there is a mass of curious scribblings all over the page. concerning these, mr. spedding says: "i find nothing in these later scribblings or in what remains of the book itself to indicate a date later than the reign of elizabeth." they are therefore written by a contemporary hand. for the purpose of reference i have placed the letters a b c d e outside of the facsimile. (a) "honorificabilitudine." this curious long word, when taken in conjunction with the words "your william shakespeare," which are found more than once upon the page, appears to have some reference to the longer word "honorificabili-tudinitatibus," which is found in "loves labors lost," printed in , the first play to which the name of shakespeare (spelled shakespere) was attached. i must repeat that upon no play appeared the name william shakespeare until that man had been sent permanently away to stratford in . the long word, as i shew in my book, "bacon is shakespeare," chapter x., page , gives us the masonic number , and really tells us with the most absolute mechanical certainty that the plays were francis bacon's "orphan" children. (b) "by mr. ffrauncis william shakespeare baco"---------- observe that ffrauncis is repeated "upside down," over these lines, and that _your/yourself_" also printed upside down, appears at the commencement of the lines. the reader will therefore not be surprised to read at (c) "revealing day through every crany peepes"; which seems to be a particularly accurate account of the object of the revelations afforded by the "scribblings" so called, viz., to inform us that "bacon was shakespeare." the same kind of revelation is again repeated at (d), when we find _your/william shakespeare_ and then above it "shak shakespeare" and "your william shakespeare." and the reader should remember that, as mr. spedding admits, all these so-called "scribblings" were contemporary and written before , the date of the death of queen elizabeth. i also call attention at (e) to the three curious scrolls, each written with one continuous sweep of the pen, which it would take a great deal of practice to succeed in successfully and easily writing. i myself am in a particularly fortunate position with regard to these scrolls, because i possess a very fine large-paper copy of "les tenures de monsieur littleton," . this work is annotated throughout in what the british museum authorities admit to be the handwriting of francis bacon, and, upon the wide large paper margin of the title page, eight similar scrolls appear, which have evidently some (shall we say rosicrucian) significance. * * note.--a few copies of my book, "bacon is shakespeare," published by gay & hancock, are still on sale at the price of s. ' d. no important statement contained therein has been or ever will be successfully controverted because the facts stated are derived from books contained in my unique library, which includes works that must have belonged to a distinguished rosicrucian who was well acquainted with the secrets of bacon's authorship. perhaps i should add that here, in this little book, before the reader's eyes, is the knowledge of this revealing page of the northumberland mss. given for the first time wide publicity. spedding's little book, which has been long out of print, was too insignificant to attract much notice, and mr. burgoyne's splendid work was too expensive for ordinary purchasers. bacon and the english language. |we owe our mighty english tongue of to-day to francis bacon and to francis bacon alone. the time has now come when this stupendous fact should be taught in every school, and that the whole of the anglo-saxon speaking peoples should know that the most glorious birthright which they possess, their matchless language,was the result of the life and labour of one man, viz.--francis bacon, who, when as little more than a boy, he was sent with our ambassador, sir amyas paulett, to paris, found there that "la pléiade" (the seven) had just succeeded in creating the french language from what had before been as they declared "merely a barbarous jargon." young bacon at once seized the idea and resolved to create an english language capable of expressing the highest thoughts. all writers are agreed that at the commencement of the reign of queen elizabeth, english as a "literary" language did not exist. all writers are agreed that what is known as the elizabethan age was the most glorious period of english literature. all writers are agreed that our language of to-day is founded upon the english translation of the bible and upon the plays of shakespeare. every word of each of these was undoubtedly written by, or under the direction of, francis bacon. max müller, in his "science of language," vol. i., , page , says: "a well educated person in england who has been at a public school and at the university... seldom uses more than about , or , words.... the hebrew testament says all that it has to say with , words, milton's poetry is built up with , , and shakespeare, who probably displayed a greater variety of expression than any writer in any language produced all his plays with about , words." does anyone suppose that any master of the stratford grammar school, where latin was the only language used, knew so many as , english words, or that the illiterate householder of stratford, known as william shakespeare, knew half or a quarter so many? but to return to the bible--we mean the bible of , known as the authorised version, which j. a. weisse tells us contains about , different words (i.e. the same number as used in the shakespeare plays). it was translated by men, whose names are known, and then handed to king james i. * it was printed about one and a half years later. in the preface, which is evidently written by bacon, we are told "we have not tyed ourselves to an uniformitie of phrasing, or to an identitie of words." this question of variety of expression is discussed in the preface at considerable length (compare with max müller's references to shakespeare's extraordinary variety of expression) and then we read: "wee might also be charged... with some unequall dealing towards a great number of good english words... if we should say, as it were, unto certaine words, stand up higher, have a place in the bible alwaies, and to others of like qualitie, get ye hence, be banished for ever." this means that an endeavour was made to insert all good english words into this new translation of the bible, so that none might be deemed to be merely "secular." * note.--the forty-eight translators made use of "the bishops' bible," but no copy of this work, on which appear any annotations by the translators, can be discovered. see bishop westcott's "history of the english bible," , p. . is it possible that any intelligent person can really read the bible as a whole, not now a bit and now a scrap, but read it straight through like an ordinary book and fail to perceive that the majestic rhythm that runs through the whole cannot be the language of many writers, but must flow from the pen, or at least from the editorship, of one great master mind? a confirmation of this statement that the authorised version of king james i. was edited by one masterhand is contained in the "times" newspaper of march nd, , where archdeacon westcott, writing about the revised version of , says, the revisers "were men of notable learning and singular industry.... there were far too many of them; and successful literary results cannot be achieved by syndicates." yes, the bible and shakespeare embody the language of the great master, but before it could be so embodied, the english tongue had to be created, and it was for this great purpose that bacon made his piteous appeals for funds to bodley, to burleigh, and to queen elizabeth. observe the great mass of splendid translations of the classics (often second-hand from the french, as plutarch's "lives" by north) with which england was positively flooded at that period. hitherto no writer seems to have called attention to the fact that certain of these translations were made from the french instead of from the original greek or latin, not because it was easier to take them from the french, but because in that way the new french words and, phrases were enabled to be introduced to enrich the english tongue. the sale of these translations could not possibly have paid any considerable portion of their cost. thus bacon worked. thus his books under all sorts of pseudonyms appeared. no book of the elizabethan age of any value proceeded from any source except from his workshop of those "good pens," over whom ben jonson was foreman. in a very rare and curious little volume, published anonymously in , under the title of "the great assises holden in parnassus by apollo and his assessours," ben jonson is described as the "keeper of the trophonian denne," and in westminster abbey his medallion bust appears clothed in a left-handed coat to show us that he was a servant of bacon.= ```o, rare ben jonson--what a turncoat grown! ````thou ne'er wast such, till clad in stone; ```then let not this disturb thy sprite, ````another age shall set thy buttons right. ' `````stowe ii., p. - . in this same book, we see on the leaf following the title page the name of apollo in large letters in an ornamental frame, and below it in the place of honour we find francis bacon placed as "_lord_ verulan _chancellor of parnassus_." this means that bacon was the greatest of poets since the world began. this proud position is also claimed for him by thomas randolf in a latin poem published in , but believed to have been written immediately after bacon's death in . thomas randolf declares that phoebus (i.e., apollo) was accessory to bacon's death because he was afraid that bacon would some day come to be crowned king of poetry or the muses. george herbert, bacon's friend, who had overlooked many of his works, repeats the same story, calling bacon the colleague of sol, i.e., phoebus apollo. instances might be multiplied, but i will only quote the words of john davies, of hereford, another friend of bacon's, who addresses him in his "scourge of folly," published about , as follows:--= ```as to her bellamour the muse is wont; ```for, thou dost her embozom; and dost use, ```her company for sport twixt grave affaires.= bacon was always recognised by his contemporaries as among the greatest of poets. although nothing of any poetical importance bearing bacon's name had been up to that time published, stowe (in his annales, printed in ) places bacon seventh in his list of elizabethan poets. the shakespeare myth is dead. |in the shakespeare myth was mortally wounded by the curious collection of "may have beens," "might have beens," "could have beens," "should have beens," "must have beens," etc., collected in sir sidney lee's supposititious life of william shakespeare. in it was killed by the cambridge history of english literature, edited by dr. ward, master of peterhouse, and mr. waller, also of peterhouse, for in volume v., pages - - , we read: "we are not quite sure of the identity of shakespeare's father; we are by no means certain of the identity of his wife.... we do not know whether he ever went to school.. . . no biography of shakespeare, therefore, which deserves any confidence has ever been constructed without a large infusion of the tell-tale words 'apparently,' 'probably,' 'there can be little doubt,' and no small infusion of the still more tell-tale 'perhaps,' 'it would be natural,' 'according to what was usual at the time,' and so forth... john shakespeare married mary arden, an heiress of a good yeomanry family, but as to whose connection with a more distinguished one of the same name there remains much room for doubt." i should add that no letter addressed to shakespeare exists excepting one asking for a loan of £ ; and that no contemporary letter referring to him has been discovered excepting three which are about money. in appeared my own book, "bacon is shakespeare," which, placed in every library in the world, has carried everywhere the news of the decease of the myth. in mark twain's book, "is shakespeare dead?" which had been published in in england, was included in the tauchnitz collection, and therefore likewise carries the news of the decease of the myth all over the earth. mark twain describes shakespeare as just a "tar baby," and says: "about him you can find out nothing. nothing of any importance. nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly commonplace person... a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was cold in his grave.... * we can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned racehorse of modern times--but not shakespeare's! there are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture). . . but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--he hadn't any history to tell. there is no way of getting round that deadly fact. and no sane way has yet been discovered of getting round its formidable significance." * note.--stratford owes all its glory to two of its sons, john, archbishop of canterbury, who built a church there; and hugh clopton, who built, at his own cost, a bridge of fourteen arches across the avon. translated from jean blaeu, . the shakespeare myth is now destroyed. does any educated person of intelligence still believe in the "tar baby," the illiterate clown of stratford, who was totally unable to write a single letter of his own name, and of whom we are told, if we understand what we are told, that he could not read a line of print. no book was found in his house, and neither of his daughters could either read or write. there exists no "portrait" of shakespeare. the significant fact that the figure put for shakespeare in the folio of the plays consists of a doubly left-handed dummy is alone sufficient to dispose of the shakespeare myth. i have printed in various newspapers all over the world about a million copies of articles demonstrating this fact, which none can successfully dispute. in modern times percy bysshe shelley--one of england's greatest poets (who knew nothing about the shakespeare controversy)--wrote as follows: "bacon was a poet. his language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect. it is a strain, which distends and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy." this statement by shelley, taken in conjunction with the testimony of "the great assises holden in parnassus," , and the words of thomas randolf, , and of bacon's friends george herbert and john davies, together with the contemporary evidence of stowe in , are sufficient to dispose, once and for all, of the absurd contention that is sometimes put forth that bacon did not possess sufficient poetical ability to have written his own greatest work, the immortal plays. lord palmerston said that he rejoiced to see the reintegration of italy, the unveiling of the mystery of china, and the explosion of the shakespeare illusions. lord houghton, the father of the present marquis of crewe, said that he agreed with lord palmerston. john bright said any man that believed that william shakespeare wrote "hamlet," or "lear," was a fool. prince bismarck said in : "he could not understand how it were possible that a man, however gifted with the intuitions of genius, could have written what was attributed to shakespeare unless he had been in touch with the great affairs of state, behind the scenes of political life, and also intimate with all the social courtesies and refinements of thought which in shakespeare's time were only to be met with in the highest circles." the "tempest" is over, the false crown of the island (the stage) has been torn from the head of the dummy that appeared to wear it. it seems difficult to imagine that people possessed of ordinary intelligence can any longer continue to believe that the most learned of all the literary works in the world was written by the most unlearned of men, william shakespeare of stratford, who never seems even to have attempted to write a single letter of his own name. it has been proved that the six so-called signatures of shakespeare were written by various law clerks, and it is now admitted that there exist no other writings which can even be supposed to be from his pen. e. d-l.